How to run sh or php script for filer or cron

wakson005

@stephenw10 Just did multiple test on it and notice that the interfaces either disappear or becomes down and never turn back on. I did a ifconfig and it gives me much more detail. The interface disappear or got rename for some reason which i thought is weird.

@stephenw10 How does the failover fail when TAP is enabled? (There is the TAP VPN Server, Client, and Interface all 3 different things)
Answers: Just to be as clear as possible for others beside me and Stephenw10 reading the "TAP VPN Server" when enable work fine and failover work flawlessly IF the TAP interfaces is disabled. So me claiming failover not working in general is probably not 100% completely true as the VIP IP failover for the LAN network work flawlessly. This is the LAN network used in the Bridge connection with the VPN. As the bridge, LAN, VIP creation doesn't directly impact TAP VPN connections it works fine. But IF TAP interfaces are enable there is a high chance of failing (maybe because the original master is holding onto the connection. Interfaces start disappearing or up status becomes down and bridge loses the interfaces that was part of the bridge. Bridge sometime don't have the TAP interfaces anymore as it is down and doesn't register it again when it is up later on.)

Things that work:

Failover for VIPs master to backup is working great for TAP and TUN. (But this is just the VIP IP that work for the failover doesn't mean the connections for the TAP still work.)

Issues notices during the switch IF interfaces is not down for the failover:

Interface disappear from ifconfig (worst case there is a new interface called tap## which used to be ovpns## which is definitely the more weirder case...)
Interface is not part of the bridge anymore
system log or openvpn log was not too helpful only show link up, link down, fatal error... (maybe i can try a higher lv log > default to get more status...)

Ways to resolve the issue manually after all those issue appears and it work almost every time:

Turn off all TAP interfaces.
Reset only TAP interfaces that has issues (Notice that the status is not reporting correctly on the gui as ifconfig status don't match with gui. Example gui show up and ifconfig show interface down [without the up].)
Turn back on the TAP interface and everything is back to normal.

I conclude that sh script with "config interface down/up" wont be enough to resolve the issue. Same with php script to enable/disable interface is not enough too. The TUN seem to be doing much more than turning on and off the interfaces. If i do that for TAP i am definitely missing some key component in the script. Manually changing does more than just turn on/off the interfaces it actually reset the bridge, interfaces, and routes in some way i believe that's probably why it work but not with script.

So as far as i can tell there is no perfect solution yet for TAP use TUN if possible as its faster and more reliable unless absolutely necessary like poor me where I have to use it no matter what for a share subnet across both site.

Thanks!

In the mean time if others have ideas i would like to try :)

wakson005

@wakson005 is this the same as pressing the vpn restart? "/usr/local/sbin/pfSsh.php playback svc restart openvpn server Server1" if so what do i need to put into Server1 is it "S00000C00001TAP00" or "ovpns18" or "18" or "Server 18" same how do i do this for client. Though client might be fine.

Like which one is the correct one to run as it just said run

Like i tried "/usr/local/sbin/pfSsh.php playback svc stop 18" and got back

but gui shows:

and status stayed the same in gui which makes me think gui is not updating as script doesn't update gui like all the other cases i seen for interfaces.

Think the above will get me many step closer to solution as restart of vpn need to be done per TAP interface based as TUN is working i don't want to touch those.

wakson005

ok for vpn restart, start, stop refer to:
https://forum.netgate.com/topic/176435/disable-openvpn-clients-on-reboot/3

will try this with my current code hopefully should fix lots of my issues i think as this was probably the key ingredient i was missing...

stephenw10

Yup you would use: pfSsh.php playback svc restart openvpn server 18

As shown:

Netgate pfSense Plus shell: playback svc

Playback of file svc started.

Usage: playback svc <action> <service name> [service-specific options]

Examples:
playback svc stop dhcpd
playback svc restart openvpn client 2
playback svc stop captiveportal zone1

wakson005

@stephenw10 Thanks that resolved my issue :) as it let me restart the openvpn server and client perfectly. Final testing prior to calling everything fool proof.

wakson005

@stephenw10 Script is suppose to running continuously and checking carp for when the master to backup transition occurs.

Script work fine when i do the following:
DiagnosticsCommand>Prompt>Execute Shell Command and enter:
/usr/local/bin/openvpn_server_client_tap_auto_failover.sh

Issue is this forever loop stop at some point as I think it is not meant running forever until shutdown.
Tried moving .sh script to:
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/openvpn_server_client_tap_auto_failover.sh
and it causes it to trigger multiple times for some reason as if it reset itself and run.

Is there somewhere to run sh script at boot up and let the loop run forever until shutdown? Restarting the script doesn't work as it stores a temporary state of what the carp state previously so it know to reset or not reset. If script start up running every time it will reset as it assume carp status changes.

stephenw10

Can you see what's killing the script?

wakson005

@stephenw10 Sound good. Is there a easy way to monitor the script for comments output to know what is occurring?

Been using package filer to add my script and run all my script in cmd prompt for testing and its working great. Is there a better way to monitor script than just output below as I will only know it stop not why it stopped. I assume there might be a kill switch for the for or while loop for some reason...

// Start off the comments with overwrite
echo "# This is a comment" > /path/to/taperrorlog.txt
// then use below to append to current file
echo "# This is a comment" >> /path/to/taperrorlog.txt

Hopefully this gives me more idea. From my rudimentary understand .sh script under "/usr/local/etc/rc.d/" directory will run automatically. But not sure how it handle a script with a while/for loop that never ends. There is possibility a kill switch to prevent infinitely loops. I think i need this approach to keep it running forever base on what I have seen:

#!/bin/sh
# PROVIDE: autostartopenvpntap
# AFTER: NETWORKING
# KEYWORD: shutdown

. /etc/rc.subr

name="autostartopenvpntap"
desc="Auto Start OpenVPN TAP Connections"
rcvar="${name}_enable"

start_cmd="${name}_start"
stop_cmd="${name}_stop"

autostartopenvpntap_start() {
    # Add your script execution command here
#    while true; do
        # .sh script below has local variable being stored for comparison check later
        # So this needs to be fixed if not it wont work. Easiest solution is to move
        # openvpn_server_client_tap_auto_failover.sh into this script I think...
        /usr/local/bin/openvpn_server_client_tap_auto_failover.sh
		echo "Start Script: /usr/local/bin/openvpn_server_client_tap_auto_failover.sh from autostartopenvpntap" >> /usr/local/bin/tapErrorLog.txt
#    done
}

autostartopenvpntap_stop() {
    # Add the command to stop your script here
    pkill -f /usr/local/bin/openvpn_server_client_tap_auto_failover.sh
}

load_rc_config $name
run_rc_command "$@"

## Set the script to start on boot by adding the following line to /etc/rc.conf.local:
## autostartopenvpntap_enable="YES"
## Reboot the system or start the script manually using the following command:
## /usr/local/etc/rc.d/autostartopenvpntap.sh start
#############################################################
## File:
##   /usr/local/etc/rc.d/autostartopenvpntap.sh
## Permissions:
##   755
## Script/Command:
##   N/A
#############################################################

wakson005

@stephenw10 Ok i found out why after outputting echo to a text file. So it turns out the script run bunch of time and does an infinitely reset loop so that's why I see it goes up and then goes back down instantly... so saving files in this location "/etc/local/etc/rc.d" run the script repeatively??? lol... Still trying to figure that out.

Best way is to save data to temporary file and load it during each loop as i think the local variable is reset each time. If it was the same script running in a loop the local variable data is maintain but it seem like it load a new script to run each time so local data won't be maintained.

Start Script: /usr/local/bin/openvpn_server_client_tap_auto_failover.sh from autostartopenvpntap Time: 12:05:28
Start Script: /usr/local/bin/openvpn_server_client_tap_auto_failover.sh Time: 12:05:28
Start Script: /usr/local/bin/enable_bridge_tap.sh Time: 12:05:28
Start Script: /usr/local/bin/disable_bridge_tap.sh Time: 12:05:28

Start Script: /usr/local/bin/openvpn_server_client_tap_auto_failover.sh from autostartopenvpntap Time: 12:06:22
Start Script: /usr/local/bin/openvpn_server_client_tap_auto_failover.sh Time: 12:06:22
Start Script: /usr/local/bin/enable_bridge_tap.sh Time: 12:06:22
Start Script: /usr/local/bin/disable_bridge_tap.sh Time: 12:06:23

Start Script: /usr/local/bin/openvpn_server_client_tap_auto_failover.sh from autostartopenvpntap Time: 12:07:33
Start Script: /usr/local/bin/openvpn_server_client_tap_auto_failover.sh Time: 12:07:33
Start Script: /usr/local/bin/enable_bridge_tap.sh Time: 12:07:33
Start Script: /usr/local/bin/disable_bridge_tap.sh Time: 12:07:33

stephenw10

Hmm, if it's really an rc script like that it will get triggered by package/service restarts etc which could explain the multiple instances.

The only time I've dealt with this was with the lcdproc package. We had to add a line to kill any existing instances before starting a new process.

I would have expected it to run fine as a shellcmd to be honest.

wakson005

@stephenw10 Yea its really weird guess my best option is to move it completely out of that location. If you said it is trigger by package/service restarts there are too many things going on that could trigger it then. I will move it to "/usr/local/bin/" and use a cron to trigger my script in an infinite loop. Its the next best solution really lol. Not the best way but its what I have I guess.

As my script work when i trigger it through shellcmd manually during the failover but doesn't work when there is all this other stuff triggering it in a infinitely loop.

stephenw10

Yup try moving it somewhere else. I usually just put scripts like that in /root. Makes them clearly not part of the default system.

wakson005

@stephenw10
Really appreciate all the help Stephen. Everything is resolved now. Failover working flawlessly in 1 minute interval due to cron (but can easily change this later for shorter time as needed).

Issue turn out to be a file permission issue:

"Filer" and cron saving data to same file using echo was probably causing permission issues to the files. Weird thing is even if the file being written is given 777 using filer to allow everyone to read, write, and execute that still didn't work. So I end up using filer to create file and write to it in script directly and same script to access it.
everything was moved out of rc.d as well. Though will probably go back just to try it again as curious.

wakson005

@wakson005 Yep rewrote a different script to check every sec for failover and now the failover start within 1sec and takes overall about 20-30 for tap failover to occur but vpn re-established almost within 5-10 sec. Works just as good or better than the TUN failover now :) thanks!!!

stephenw10

Nice.