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    23.01 Upgrade unbound Issue

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
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    • S
      SteveITS Galactic Empire @stephenw10
      last edited by

      @stephenw10 I thought I'd try to replicate it with linkedin.com just now and couldn't, at least by turning enabling DNSSEC and immediately (without waiting an hour or two) running nslookup. It was failing the other day because I was testing and resolved it.

      Of course disabling DNSSEC also restarts unbound so now there's a question of what the problem actually is...does it show up after time? On certain queries? When the domain's NS has something misconfigured?

      If it is a bug, then it occurs to me there's a question on the correct solution:

      A) resolve the bug
      B) automatically disable/hide DNSSEC when forwarding is enabled

      Option B sounds like it is "more correct"...and maybe something that should be done regardless of any bug/not bug.

      Pre-2.7.2/23.09: Only install packages for your version, or risk breaking it. Select your branch in System/Update/Update Settings.
      When upgrading, allow 10-15 minutes to restart, or more depending on packages and device speed.
      Upvote ๐Ÿ‘ helpful posts!

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      • johnpozJ
        johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator @SteveITS
        last edited by johnpoz

        @steveits said in 23.01 Upgrade unbound Issue:

        does it show up after time?

        Most likely this - if your asking for dnssec when where you forward to is already doing dnssec.. And you get something returned via cache - because your forwarding, etc. As quad9 step 3 says about turning it off "can cause false dnssec failures" if dnssec fails then what your looking for would fail, etc.

        If your forwarding, clearly you trust where your forwarding too. They are already doing dnssec as a resolver, which is where it is meant to be done, etc. I see no point in setting your unbound to try and do dnssec as well.. Its going to be flawed when your not resolving. At best its causing extra queries, at worse stuff is going to fail to resolve. There is no reason to do it.

        edit: btw I have been saying to turn off dnssec if your forwarding for YEARS... here is a post from 2016, where I state to turn it off if your forwarding ;)

        https://forum.netgate.com/post/627755

        Might be posts from before that, prob all the way back to when unbound was just a package in pfsense and not built in.. dnssec has no use in forwarding mode..

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        • S
          SteveITS Galactic Empire @johnpoz
          last edited by SteveITS

          @johnpoz said in 23.01 Upgrade unbound Issue:

          I see no point in setting your unbound to try and do dnssec as well

          Oh I'm not debating whether it should be off. :) I'm suggesting that since it should be off, when forwarding is enabled, then pfSense should turn it off. IOW, avoid foot-shootery.

          I've seen maybe 10ish people complaining about DNS problems after installing 23.01 and it seems like it's DNSSEC and forwarding.

          Pre-2.7.2/23.09: Only install packages for your version, or risk breaking it. Select your branch in System/Update/Update Settings.
          When upgrading, allow 10-15 minutes to restart, or more depending on packages and device speed.
          Upvote ๐Ÿ‘ helpful posts!

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          • johnpozJ
            johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator @SteveITS
            last edited by

            @steveits we are on the same page, and I understood your suggesting it should be off if you enable forwarding.. Completely agree with you.. Maybe we crossed some wires or something.. We are in lock step here - if the user clicks forwarding mode, the checkbox for dnssec should be unchecked and grayed out to be honest.

            But that would draw complaints most likely as well ;) Maybe pop up another check box that says, by clicking this I understand what I am doing and want to do forwarding with dnssec.. I will not post any questions or threads about dns issues if I have this checked ;)

            An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
            If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
            Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
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            GertjanG 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • S SteveITS referenced this topic on
            • S
              SteveITS Galactic Empire
              last edited by

              @johnpoz @stephenw10 I made a Redmine feature request.

              I can't easily generate a default config file right now (wife is on a conference call ๐Ÿ˜‰) but is DNSSEC enabled by default? I am pretty sure it is not, but it still seems safer to turn it off when forwarding is enabled.

              Pre-2.7.2/23.09: Only install packages for your version, or risk breaking it. Select your branch in System/Update/Update Settings.
              When upgrading, allow 10-15 minutes to restart, or more depending on packages and device speed.
              Upvote ๐Ÿ‘ helpful posts!

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              • jimpJ
                jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
                last edited by

                The default configuration has Forwarding off and DNSSEC on. Someone enabling forwarding should probably disable DNSSEC manually but that isn't rejected by validation or changed automatically.

                Remember: Upvote with the ๐Ÿ‘ button for any user/post you find to be helpful, informative, or deserving of recognition!

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                • GertjanG
                  Gertjan @johnpoz
                  last edited by

                  Forwarding is probably several msecs faster.
                  Are there other major advantages for not doing resolving ?
                  And thus not doing DNSSEC ?

                  I've just checked https://dnsviz.net/d/linkedin.com/dnssec/ - so they do DNSSEC.

                  I've asked my unbound : dig @127.0.0.1 linkedin.com +trace and saw that 'dnssec' flaf was set : the result was 100 % valid.

                  I mean, I was happy the day I didn't need to use these ISP DNS servers any more.
                  I could, finally, use the real thing : the root servers ! The ones that define DNS, and are close to core Internet. Resolving means : I need nobody, I mean not needed external resources, for 'DNS' to work. DNSSEC is just a nice bonus.

                  Who wants to inform me why I should consider 'forwarding' ?

                  No "help me" PM's please. Use the forum, the community will thank you.
                  Edit : and where are the logs ??

                  johnpozJ C 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • johnpozJ
                    johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator @Gertjan
                    last edited by johnpoz

                    @gertjan said in 23.01 Upgrade unbound Issue:

                    Who wants to inform me why I should consider 'forwarding' ?

                    Won't be me, you couldn't get me to forward my dns to anyone to be honest.. There is zero point to it if you can resolve. Only reason would might be if your on a horrible connection and just can not reliably resolve - say sat or something, or your on a connection that is messing or blocking dns other than to them, etc. vpn might do that - you know for your own good <rolleyes>

                    Forwarding is probably several msecs faster.

                    Who says - might there be a few ms longer to resolve something from scratch, ok.. sure.. But once have the gltds cached, and for that matter the authoritative ns for any specific domain. When I need to look up say host.somedomain.tld would go direct to that domains ns.. Which might/could be faster or slower than say some forwarders ns.

                    But that I can tell you for sure, is every query to some forwarder is going to take X ms, at best - where maybe slower when they have to resolve it, because its not in their cache, etc.

                    using a forwarder for faster lookups is not really a valid reason to use them.. At best your talking a few ms anyway - who cares? if you think 10ms here or there is making a difference in your overall experience in internet browsing - your not understanding how any of it works to be honest. Or how fast 10ms is ;) That is ms, not minutes not seconds.. .010 seconds..

                    An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                    If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                    Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
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                    • C
                      Cylosoft @Gertjan
                      last edited by Cylosoft

                      @gertjan It's another layer of filtering/security. Encrypted connection out to a known DNS provider. For filtering we have a couple of different tiers based on how much filtering we want the location to have. Quad9 for example does some basic DNS blocking. Some sites get NextDNS connections so IT can manage rules centrally there rather than running pfBlocker locally. Some get wide open Cloudflare DNS servers. Some get filtered Cloudflare.

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                      • jimpJ
                        jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
                        last edited by

                        Some ISPs break acting as a resovler in various ways as well, either rate limiting or address limiting who you can reach on common DNS ports, or other similar shenanigans.

                        DNS over TLS/DNS over HTTPS are OK if you really trust the provider on the other end. Those are for privacy and not for authentication/validation, though. If you forward you have to trust that the upstream DNS servers are also not changing your query results in unexpected ways.

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                        • S
                          SteveITS Galactic Empire @jimp
                          last edited by

                          @jimp I understand your logic. Is it therefore a regression in unbound, if it worked with DNSSEC enabled in prior pfSense versions? If the answer is, "it's not supposed to work" then I can understand that too. I'm just trying to help people out. ๐Ÿ˜ƒ Worst case, after people upgrade to 23.01 and have a problem then they won't have it enabled for future upgrades anyway. Perhaps a "if you are using forwarding and have problems disable this option" note on that setting, if it's not too much handholding.

                          Pre-2.7.2/23.09: Only install packages for your version, or risk breaking it. Select your branch in System/Update/Update Settings.
                          When upgrading, allow 10-15 minutes to restart, or more depending on packages and device speed.
                          Upvote ๐Ÿ‘ helpful posts!

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                          • jimpJ
                            jimp Rebel Alliance Developer Netgate
                            last edited by jimp

                            The answer really depends entirely on the upstream resolver behavior, so there is no way to know. If we put a note on the option then it's likely to be missed since they'd have to already know which option they'd need to disable to see that or to know their problem is related to forwarding, which isn't obvious. Bit of a chicken/egg issue there.

                            This is already covered in the docs under troubleshooting DNS issues:

                            https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/troubleshooting/dns.html#check-dns-service

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                            • S
                              SteveITS Galactic Empire @jimp
                              last edited by

                              @jimp ๐Ÿ‘ It just seemed like a lot of people were now/newly hitting it on 23.01 so unbound behavior apparently changed. I need to check that setting when we get to updating the rest of our, and all our clients, routers.
                              (Always good to read the docs. Not sure I cited it this thread but I have in others.)

                              Pre-2.7.2/23.09: Only install packages for your version, or risk breaking it. Select your branch in System/Update/Update Settings.
                              When upgrading, allow 10-15 minutes to restart, or more depending on packages and device speed.
                              Upvote ๐Ÿ‘ helpful posts!

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                              • stephenw10S
                                stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                last edited by

                                Mmm, it does seem like something has changed there causing people to hit this who weren't before. I wonder if it's some secondary effect though like they were always hitting it but cached values were hiding it until the upgrade.

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                                • johnpozJ
                                  johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator @stephenw10
                                  last edited by johnpoz

                                  @stephenw10 I have not had time to look through all the changes in unbound. But were we not on like 1.15.something, and now we are on 1.17.1 - have to assume lots of changes to unbound in such a big jump in version numbers.

                                  is it also possible that something changed with say quad9.. I had not noticed their actual recommendation to disable dnssec if you forward to them until recently where it was pointed out in a thread. Has that been their standing recommendation for a long time, or did they possible make some changes that now make it the dnssec failures hit more often? If using 1.17.1 unbound?

                                  An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                                  If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                                  Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
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                                  • bingo600B
                                    bingo600
                                    last edited by

                                    I haven't noticed any issues on my 23.01 "Test Box"
                                    And i even use DNSSEC w. Forwarding.
                                    Making my 20 meters from the pfSense to my two linux DNS servers "super secure" ... ๐Ÿ™„

                                    96c8991e-1d97-4339-853a-bb5ce06853de-image.png

                                    /Bingo

                                    If you find my answer useful - Please give the post a ๐Ÿ‘ - "thumbs up"

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                                    • stephenw10S
                                      stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                      last edited by

                                      That's your own hosted DNS resolvers? Interesting. They support DNSSec I preseume.

                                      It seems unlikely any upstream change, at Quad9, would have coincided with 23.01 release. But perhaps people just started checking after upgrading. I agree some behaviour change in Unbound seems most likely to me.

                                      Steve

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                                      • johnpozJ
                                        johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator @stephenw10
                                        last edited by

                                        @stephenw10 I just did a breeze over of the changes and bug fixes in unbound from 1.15 to 1.17.1 and nothing jumped out at me.. But possible something that was fixed now triggers more failures that should of failed before but didn't, etc.

                                        I despise forwarding, so while I will turn it on to show how it can be done. I have no desire to leave it on for any length of time to see if errors occur on specific domains I might be going to, etc. Or after a amount of time..

                                        if someone could point out a specific query that fails when forwarding using dnssec and forwarding, but works fine with just forwarding to a dnssec resolver, be it over tls or just clear, etc. I would be up for looking into that.

                                        An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                                        If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                                        Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
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                                        • bingo600B
                                          bingo600
                                          last edited by bingo600

                                          I'm only forwarding because:

                                          1:
                                          I already had a working linux DNS/DHCP setup , that does dynamic DHCP entries in DNS.

                                          2:
                                          Unbound DHCP adding "hosts", created unacceptable reload/delays.
                                          I want my DHCP devices to be resolvable, and more important to have "sane names" in the DNS system.

                                          DNSSEC all 20 meters on a local network ... Is kind'a "well it hasen't broke yet" , and my Bind9's are setup to accept it.

                                          /Bingo

                                          If you find my answer useful - Please give the post a ๐Ÿ‘ - "thumbs up"

                                          pfSense+ 23.05.1 (ZFS)

                                          QOTOM-Q355G4 Quad Lan.
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                                          • johnpozJ
                                            johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator @bingo600
                                            last edited by johnpoz

                                            @bingo600 said in 23.01 Upgrade unbound Issue:

                                            only forwarding because

                                            Your forwarding to your own dns? What does it do then to resolve public dns. Forwarding to your own internal resolvers is different ball game than forwarding to some outside dns ;)

                                            An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools
                                            If you get confused: Listen to the Music Play
                                            Please don't Chat/PM me for help, unless mod related
                                            SG-4860 24.11 | Lab VMs 2.7.2, 24.11

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