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    Strongswan - increase retransmit_tries from default of 5

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved IPsec
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    • A
      ay
      last edited by

      I'm using using IPSEC VTI with one side set as responder only, following the docs and forum to mitigate duplicate IPSEC SA entries.

      When there is a provider outage of 5 or more minutes
      (somewhere upstream or in transit - where the local link stays up )
      Some of the initiator sides will log "giving up after 5 retransmits"

      charon	95215	11[IKE] <con3000|9> giving up after 5 retransmits
      charon	95215	11[IKE] <con3000|9> retransmit 5 of request with message ID 0
      
      

      I have to manually do a reconnect on the IPSEC connection.

      Normally FRR OSPF finds an alternate, but I've noticed more often OSPF learned routes disappearing from the System Routes -- Not necessarily causal or related.
      -- The coincident problems produce a user-noticeable outage.

      Is there a way to increase Strongswan's retries attempts - to at least mask some of the shorter outages?

      I think it is this variable

      StrongSwan.org Wiki -- charon.retransmit_tries

      I found a strongswan.conf file in pfsense under

      /var/etc/ipsec/strongswan.conf
      # Automatically generated config file - DO NOT MODIFY. Changes will be overwritten.
      

      Is there a clean way of inserting

      charon.retransmit_tries = 9
      

      somewhere else, similar to how

      /boot/loader.conf  and  /boot/loader.conf.local
      

      coexist?

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