IPSec Down after Upgrade to 2.3

owczi

…OK, some progress.

Having looked up the PF_KEY rcvbuf error got me a change and a setting introduced in StrongSWAN 5.3.0 where the event socket buffer can be tuned.

Once all IPSec tunnels were dead, I stopped ipsec, stopped openbgpd, then I opened /etc/inc/vpn.inc, searched for the charon { plugins { section and added the following:

....

                kernel-pfkey {

                        events_buffer_size = 1048576

                }

Started ipsec via GUI which re-generated the configs, started openbgpd. Guess what - tunnels came back up, I can see SADs and SPDs again, and some of the BGP sessions are up again (those to Cisco, funny enough). I have now rebooted all pfSense instances and will see how long they will last.

Thanks,
owczi

obrienmd

@owczi:

…OK, some progress.

...

Started ipsec via GUI which re-generated the configs, started openbgpd. Guess what - tunnels came back up, I can see SADs and SPDs again, and some of the BGP sessions are up again (those to Cisco, funny enough). I have now rebooted all pfSense instances and will see how long they will last.

Thanks,
owczi

Still up?

owczi

@obrienmd:

Still up?

Nope - shat itself after about 24 hours. HOWEVER, I don't have to reboot to get the tunnels and BGP sessions back up. The setting I added to charon config may not have anything to do with it. I will keep trying various combinations to get a sensible answer: on some of the pfSense instances I did not have to restart IPSec at all, only bgpd, but it could have been that they had BGP down because of the other peers, and an ipsec restart is still required. I have no time to investigate right now.

Basically:```
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/bgpd.sh stop; ipsec stop; sleep 1; ipsec start; sleep 2; /usr/local/etc/rc.d/bgpd.sh start


I need to write a monitoring script that will do this when all tunnels go down. For now I will just make it a cron job every few hours, maybe even every hour. offset so it doesn't happen on all instances at the same time. This will at least keep me going.

owczi

EDIT: full path for ipsec - required when invoked from cron; do not reset ipsec / bgpd if there are no connections.
EDIT2: fixed to correctly pick up connections when nothing is up and check for buffer errors
Crude as can be, but will do the job… I run this every 5 minutes via a cron job:


#!/bin/sh
estabcount=0
p2count=0
totalcount=0
buferr=0

bounceall() {
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/bgpd.sh stop
sleep 1
$ipsecpath stop
sleep 1
$ipsecpath start
sleep 3
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/bgpd.sh start
}

ipsecpath=/usr/local/sbin/ipsec

echo "=== started at `date` ==="

for con in `$ipsecpath status | grep "\[" | sed 's/\[.*//g' | sort | uniq` ; do 
echo $con
estab=0
p2=0

$ipsecpath status $con | grep ESTAB >/dev/null 2>&1 && estab=1
$ipsecpath status $con | grep INSTALLED >/dev/null 2>&1 && p2=1

[ $estab -eq 1 ] && { 
	echo $con p1 up
	estabcount=$(( $estabcount + 1 ))
	[ $p2 -eq 0 ] && {
	 	echo $con p2 down, restarting
                echo stopping $con...
		$ipsecpath down $con >/dev/null 2>&1
		sleep 1
                echo starting $con...
		$ipsecpath up $con | grep error | grep "buffer space" >/dev/null 2>&1  && { echo "PF_KEY buffer error while starting $con"; buferr=$(( $buferr + 1 )); }
	}

}
[ $estab -eq 0 ] && { echo $con p1 down; }
[ $p2 -eq 1 ] && { echo $con p2 up; p2count=$(( $p2count + 1 )); }
totalcount=$(( $totalcount + 1 ))
done

echo
echo ===
echo estab $estabcount / $totalcount
echo p2 $p2count / $totalcount
echo buf_err $buferr / $totalcount
echo ===
echo

[ $totalcount -gt 0 ] && [ $buferr -gt 0 ] && {
echo $buferr connections show buffer space errors - bouncing openbgpd and ipsec
bounceall
exit
}

[ $totalcount -gt 0 ] && [ $estabcount -eq 0 ] && {
echo no connections have p1 up - bouncing openbgpd and ipsec
bounceall
exit
}

[ $totalcount -gt 0 ] && [ $estabcount -eq $totalcount ] && [ $p2count -eq 0 ] && {
echo all connections have p1 up but no connections have p2 up - bouncing openbgpd and ipsec
bounceall
exit
}

It will bounce all tunnels which have phase 2 down, and if no tunnels have p1 it will bounce ipsec and bgpd. We'll see how long this will last.

obrienmd

How has this worked for you?

owczi

I have just edited the post with the latest version of the script. It didn't work when everything was down, and didn't correctly react to the situation where all P1 is up but no P2 is up. With these modifications This has been working fine for me for the past two weeks or so. It still crashes, but at least it recovers now.

So: The charon setting I added does not fix the problem, but allows you to recover by stopping bgpd, stopping ipsec, starting ipsec and then starting bgpd again - which did not seem possible before. Better than nothing…

owczi

Still going strong - up to 7 days of BGP session uptime, after which IPSec and BGP get restarted once charon starts showing the buffer space errors while attepting to restart tunnels. My setup has got redundancy so this is reliable; obviously a single connection will be impacted, albeit not for long.

EDIT: Some two months later and I have pretty much forgotten about IPSec + OpenBGPD issues. Tunnels occasionally die, but with redundancy I have not experienced a single outage since putting my solution in place. BGP session duration varies, but it is quietly restored whenever the buffer problem rears its ugly head.

obrienmd

Has anyone tried to repro with 2.4 beta?

tmuxr

I believe I have the same / similar problem regarding strongswan + openbgpd for AWS VPC VPNs.

I saw the discusion on kernel tunables and the link to Redmine bug #6223.

I saw owcz1's bash script. It sounds like an effective workaround but not an actual problem resolution.

I have not yet implemented it, but will give it a close look.

My status is as follows:

First time pfSense user

Installed on one appliance this week from pfSense-CE-memstick-serial-2.3.2-RELEASE-amd64 image

Appliance has a static public IP on WAN and a static RFC1918 IP on LAN

Stood up two strongswan tunnels to AWS VPC per their instructions http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonVPC/latest/UserGuide/vpn-connections.html

Installed openbgpd, configured a neighbor group with two neighbors for AWS routes; also configured a third neighbor on LAN segment for internal routing

With only one tunnel is enabled, service starts properly and BGP routes propagate.

Second tunnel subsequently enabled (and changes applied): Tunnel comes up, remote endpoint pingable, BGP looks good

With both tunnels enabled, service does not start properly. Remote endpoints not pingable, BGP routes not propagated

Seems to go into the weeds when left alone. When I logged out yesterday both tunnels were working, and when I logged in today they were not.

Google search on charon "error sending to PF_KEY socket: No buffer space available" log event led to this thread.

Have already verified the code fix is present in /etc/inc/vpn.inc which was committed by Chris Buechler committed on Apr 14.

If I am unable to stabilize this deployment via the documented workaround, I will be available to collaborate.

Any time or assistance the community can offer will be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

mraymond

Looks like the pfsense OpenBGPD package has an update available that showed up within the past couple months. (0.11_7)
Does anyone know if this resolves the PF_KEY buffer issue? I haven't tried it.

frgiaws

@mraymond:

Looks like the pfsense OpenBGPD package has an update available that showed up within the past couple months. (0.11_7)
Does anyone know if this resolves the PF_KEY buffer issue? I haven't tried it.

Running 0.11_9 of OpenBGPD and experience the same problem, not updated pfsense to 2.3.2_1 (Still on 2.3) but

kernel-pfkey {

events_buffer_size = 1048576

}

In charon plugins in /etc/inc/vpn.inc

Gives me the ability to stop&start to resume the tunnel via restarts of ipsec and openbgpd.

With 2.4.0 (FreeBSD pfSense.localdomain 11.0-RELEASE-p7 FreeBSD 11.0-RELEASE-p7 #29 6317ca7fc42(RELENG_2_4): Sun Feb 12 08:31:05 CST 2017 root@buildbot2.netgate.com:/builder/ce/tmp/obj/builder/ce/tmp/FreeBSD-src/sys/pfSense amd64)

It's even worse, much more unstable and openbgpd dies constantly, doesn't require intervention but BGP sessions just die

169.254.41.77 = AWS BGP peer, reachable via IPSec

Feb 12 17:21:46 bgpd 72880 neighbor 169.254.41.77 (VPC): state change Connect -> OpenSent, reason: Connection opened
Feb 12 17:21:46 bgpd 72880 neighbor 169.254.41.77 (VPC): state change OpenSent -> OpenConfirm, reason: OPEN message received
Feb 12 17:21:46 bgpd 72880 neighbor 169.254.41.77 (VPC): state change OpenConfirm -> Established, reason: KEEPALIVE message received
Feb 12 17:21:47 bgpd 72601 nexthop 169.254.41.77 now valid: via XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX (my public IP)
Feb 12 17:22:26 bgpd 72880 neighbor 169.254.41.77 (VPC): write error: Permission denied
Feb 12 17:22:26 bgpd 72880 neighbor 169.254.41.77 (VPC): state change Established -> Idle, reason: Fatal error
Feb 12 17:23:05 bgpd 72611 route decision engine exiting
Feb 12 17:23:05 bgpd 72880 session engine exiting
Feb 12 17:23:05 bgpd 72601 dispatch_imsg in main: pipe closed
Feb 12 17:23:05 bgpd 72601 dispatch_imsg in main: pipe closed
Feb 12 17:23:05 bgpd 72601 Lost child: session engine exited
Feb 12 17:23:05 bgpd 72601 Lost child: route decision engine exited
Feb 12 17:23:05 bgpd 72601 kernel routing table 0 (Loc-RIB) decoupled
Feb 12 17:23:05 bgpd 72601 Terminating

[2.4.0-BETA][admin@pfSense.localdomain]/usr/local/etc/rc.d: /usr/local/sbin/bgpd -d -f /var/etc/openbgpd/bgpd.conf -v
startup
rereading config
route decision engine ready
new ktable rdomain_0 for rtableid 0
RDE reconfigured
session engine ready
listening on 169.254.41.78
SE reconfigured
neighbor 169.254.41.77 (VPC): state change None -> Idle, reason: None
neighbor 169.254.41.77 (VPC): state change Idle -> Connect, reason: Start
neighbor 169.254.41.77 (VPC): state change Connect -> OpenSent, reason: Connection opened
neighbor 169.254.41.77 (VPC): state change OpenSent -> OpenConfirm, reason: OPEN message received
neighbor 169.254.41.77 (VPC): state change OpenConfirm -> Established, reason: KEEPALIVE message received
nexthop 169.254.41.77 now valid: via XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX
Traffic stops here
neighbor 169.254.41.77 (VPC): write error: Permission denied
neighbor 169.254.41.77 (VPC): state change Established -> Idle, reason: Fatal error
neighbor 169.254.41.77 (VPC): state change Idle -> Connect, reason: Start
neighbor 169.254.41.77 (VPC): state change Connect -> OpenSent, reason: Connection opened
neighbor 169.254.41.77 (VPC): state change OpenSent -> OpenConfirm, reason: OPEN message received
neighbor 169.254.41.77 (VPC): state change OpenConfirm -> Established, reason: KEEPALIVE message received
nexthop 169.254.41.77 now valid: via XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX

aarodynamics

Would the pfSense developers possibly consider moving to Quagga instead of OpenBGPd?

It seems like Quagga with a proper pfSense GUI front-end would solve two problems:

It would solve this current instability/conflict with strongSwan
Quagga would allow for simultaneous use of OSPF & BGP

From 50k foot perspective, this seems like the best choice for the platform.

Ruddimaster

does this problem still exist in 2.3.4 p1?

BEB Consulting

For me yes it does…

https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=134925

TimmZahn

owczi - did you ever find a more elegant solution to the issue, or are you still running this script via cron?

cradulescu

@timmzahn said in IPSec Down after Upgrade to 2.3:

ou ever find a more elegant solution to the issue, or are you sti

I know this topic is old, but since I found it via google I will post my solution.

I did replace OpenBGP with FrrBGP. I have been able to restore my IPSEC tunneling with AWS and also use the BGP services on PfSense for my needs.