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    [SOLVED] Route pfsense itself over VPN.

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
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    • A
      Antibiotic @nimrod
      last edited by

      @nimrod said in Route pfsense itself over VPN.:

      I created a rule on tailscale group, however there is no option to select tailscale subnets. Just tailscale networks. See bellow

      Could be better use alias than

      pfSense plus 24.11 on Topton mini PC
      CPU: Intel N100
      NIC: Intel i-226v 4 pcs
      RAM : 16 GB DDR5
      Disk: 128 GB NVMe
      Brgds, Archi

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      • N
        nimrod @Antibiotic
        last edited by

        @Antibiotic said in Route pfsense itself over VPN.:

        @nimrod said in Route pfsense itself over VPN.:

        I created a rule on tailscale group, however there is no option to select tailscale subnets. Just tailscale networks. See bellow

        Could be better use alias than

        Alias for what ? There are no tailscale subnets available.

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        • stephenw10S
          stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
          last edited by

          Create an alias containing the tailscale subnets you're routing. Then use that as source.

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          • N
            nimrod
            last edited by

            I created the alias with tailscale cidr ip. Used it as a source in a firewall rule on tailscale group, and the traffic is still going through my ISP instead of VPN. Here is the rule.

            d567c5dd-61c0-48ce-9ba6-f32d4fbf1a84-image.png

            Tried reloading firewall rules and restarting tailscale service with no result. Tried using ip address of my phone instead of complete cidr block. Same thing.

            The interesting part about this is that the DNS resolution is going through VPN which is what i want, but the rest of the traffic is still going through default gateway.

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            • stephenw10S
              stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
              last edited by

              Hmm, no states shown on it so it's not matching and passing traffic for some reason.

              Is it actually arriving with that source?

              Is some other rule passing it?

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              • N
                nimrod @stephenw10
                last edited by

                @stephenw10 said in Route pfsense itself over VPN.:

                Hmm, no states shown on it so it's not matching and passing traffic for some reason.

                Is it actually arriving with that source?

                Yes. Here is the screenshot from tailscale dashboard.

                02575166-1da8-4c3a-b856-3d01a1395f06-image.png

                These ip addresses are also matching what the tailscale in pfsense is showing.

                Is some other rule passing it?

                There are no other rules anywhere, except tailscale group, where im routing 100.64.0.0/10 subnet.

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                • stephenw10S
                  stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                  last edited by

                  Hmm, and the rule still shows no states or traffic on it?

                  Do you have a floating rule allowing that traffic perhaps?

                  You can check the states to see what rule opened it at the CLI: pfctl -vvss
                  That will show all the states though which could a lot!

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                  • N
                    nimrod @stephenw10
                    last edited by

                    @stephenw10 said in Route pfsense itself over VPN.:

                    Hmm, and the rule still shows no states or traffic on it?

                    Correct.

                    Do you have a floating rule allowing that traffic perhaps?

                    No.

                    You can check the states to see what rule opened it at the CLI: pfctl -vvss
                    That will show all the states though which could a lot!

                    pfctl -vvss is showing tons of states on all interfaces and vlans, so i refined my search with pfctl -vvss |grep 100.133 and then pfctl -vvss |grep 100.111 and then pfctl -vvss |grep 100.64

                    None of these searches returned anything even if i execute them while the phone is connected to tailscale and receiving/sending traffic. If i use known non tailscale ip address, its shown clearly and then i can find it in the list along with the firewall id. But tailscale ips return nothing.

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                    • stephenw10S
                      stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                      last edited by

                      Try sending some traffic from a client to some unique IP and check the states created by that. You could be seeing it post NAT.

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                      • N
                        nimrod @stephenw10
                        last edited by

                        @stephenw10 said in Route pfsense itself over VPN.:

                        Try sending some traffic from a client to some unique IP and check the states created by that. You could be seeing it post NAT.

                        This is getting very strange now.

                        First i initiated continuous rtsp traffic from my PC to local camera and then i run pfctl -vvss to check the states and i could clearly see this:

                        all tcp 20.20.1.1:19791 (10.1.1.100:57738) -> 20.20.1.236:8083 ESTABLISHED:ESTABLISHED [222663977 + 2147156224] wscale 7 [2738703565 + 4293657088] wscale 7 age 00:01:20, expires in 23:59:46, 25:55 pkts, 2212:68118 bytes, rule 122, allow-opts, log id: f013346700000000 creatorid: cd852d8c origif: igb5.25

                        10.1.1.100 - pc
                        20.20..1.1 - pfsense camera interface
                        20.20.1.236 - camera

                        Then i did the same from my phone via tailscale (tailscale is configured to broadcast 20.20.1.0/24 subnet) and this is what i see when i run pfctl -vvss again:

                        all tcp 20.20.1.1:1996 -> 20.20.1.236 :8083 ESTABLISHED:ESTABLISHED [2330702467 + 2147156224] wscale 7 [599643748 + 65792] wscale 7 age 00:01:10, expires in 23:59:52, 26:22 pkts, 3121:14535 bytes, rule 122, allow-opts, log id: 0a14346700000000 creatorid: cd852d8c origif: igb5.25

                        There is no tailscale or my phone ip anywhere in the logs when access to camera is initiated via tailscale.

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                        • stephenw10S
                          stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                          last edited by

                          Hmm, that's odd. Let me do some digging here. What pfSense version is this?

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                          • N
                            nimrod @stephenw10
                            last edited by

                            @stephenw10 said in Route pfsense itself over VPN.:

                            Hmm, that's odd. Let me do some digging here. What pfSense version is this?

                            Its 2.7.2 CE with all the patches applied using system patches pacakage.

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                            • stephenw10S
                              stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                              last edited by

                              Mmm, OK, clearly been too ling since I played with Tailscale. 🙄 That's the expected behaviour.

                              See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fg_jIPVcioY&t=1240s

                              Which makes it very inconvenient as there's no way to policy route the traffic as far as I know. The only way to route that traffic would be to set the default route to the VPN. You could then policy route traffic other traffic via the WAN but pfSense itself would always use the VPN.

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                              • N
                                nimrod @stephenw10
                                last edited by

                                @stephenw10 said in Route pfsense itself over VPN.:

                                Mmm, OK, clearly been too ling since I played with Tailscale. 🙄 That's the expected behaviour.

                                You have been helpful Stephen no matter the outcome. Much appreciated.

                                See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fg_jIPVcioY&t=1240s

                                This makes sense now.

                                Which makes it very inconvenient as there's no way to policy route the traffic as far as I know. The only way to route that traffic would be to set the default route to the VPN. You could then policy route traffic other traffic via the WAN but pfSense itself would always use the VPN.

                                Thats how im using it currently, but the issue is that other openvpn tunnels that i use are failing to connect when pfsense is rebooted, and then i need to manually restart all openvpn services including the one selected as the default wan. Once thats done, everything is working perfectly, including the tailscale traffic.

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                                • stephenw10S
                                  stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                  last edited by

                                  You could set static routes for those VPN endpoints via the WAN gateway.

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                                  • N
                                    nimrod @stephenw10
                                    last edited by

                                    @stephenw10 said in Route pfsense itself over VPN.:

                                    You could set static routes for those VPN endpoints via the WAN gateway.

                                    Im sorry, im talking about openvpn clients in pfsense. They fail to connect to mullvad vpn server when rebooted. Can a static route help with that, and if so, how?

                                    eecb0301-a253-406d-9d2c-e3ec287ae5c7-image.png

                                    Not really sure what should i set in Destination network.

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                                    • stephenw10S
                                      stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                      last edited by

                                      Put in the IP address of the VPN server the client connects to. pfSense uses the system routing table to determine how to route outgoing connections. Adding a static route to the VPN server will route it via the WAN.

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                                      • N
                                        nimrod @stephenw10
                                        last edited by

                                        @stephenw10 said in Route pfsense itself over VPN.:

                                        Put in the IP address of the VPN server the client connects to. pfSense uses the system routing table to determine how to route outgoing connections. Adding a static route to the VPN server will route it via the WAN.

                                        I have 3 openvpn clients in pfsense. Should i create 3 static routes ? One for each vpn server ?

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                                        • stephenw10S
                                          stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                          last edited by

                                          Yes, add static routes to anything that needs to use the WAN gateway.

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                                          • N
                                            nimrod @stephenw10
                                            last edited by

                                            @stephenw10 said in Route pfsense itself over VPN.:

                                            Yes, add static routes to anything that needs to use the WAN gateway.

                                            One more question, what should i set as a interface in openvpn client

                                            42ff94ce-30ab-48c8-899a-cd85031fc4b4-image.png

                                            Or it doesnt matter and this is getting overridden by static mapping ?

                                            I also have one wireguard client connected. I assume i need to create a static mapping for it as well ?

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