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    IPsec tunnel with FQDN identifiers and "DNS on one site down" scenario

    IPsec
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    • E
      e-1-1 last edited by

      Consider the following scenario for a site A - site B IPsec tunnel:

      • For one reason or another, the DNS resolver at site B is no longer working. It could be because, somehow, after a hard reboot, the firewall logic restored a previous, invalid unbound config, one that isn't accepted by the daemon, therefore, it will not start.
      • FQDNs are used as identifiers.

      With the dns resolver no longer working, messages such as

      filterdns	91621	failed to resolve host {site A FQDN identifier} will retry later again.
      

      appear in the DNS logs as a result of the business logic trying to find site A's IP address.

      Worse, with no IP resolved, site A's address is not added to the hidden pf rules, therefore site A cannot initiate an IPsec tunnel, as its traffic over (default) UDP 500 is blocked by default by site B's pf instance.

      Result: broken tunnel, manual intervention needed on site B.

      I'd propose:

      • adding an option in phase 1 settings to "allow all inbound IPsec connections" when partner's site IP cannot be resolved. It's exposing the firewall a bit, but it can be a good tradeoff when the tunnel needs to stay on.
      • introducing business logic into the DNS side: either setting a config as being a "known good" one and reverting to it automatically when unbound detects a bad config at startup, or automatically going back one unbound config at a time until unbound loads.
        With both of the above having associated alarms triggered when the logic is run.
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      • E
        e-1-1 last edited by

        @jimp I'd love to see an opinion from Netgate about this scenario when you got some time; can't be that I'm the only one running site to site IPsec tunnels with dynamic IPs and FQDNs as identifiers.

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