Kea DHCP stops working

Overlord

Is this fixed? I have the issue with 24.03-RELEASE:

ERROR [kea-dhcp4.dhcp4.0x220050812000] DHCP4_PARSER_COMMIT_FAIL parser failed to commit changes: cannot lock socket lockfile, /tmp/kea4-ctrl-socket.lock, : Resource temporarily unavailable

ERROR [kea-dhcp4.dhcp4.0x220050812000] DHCP4_CONFIG_LOAD_FAIL configuration error using file: /usr/local/etc/kea/kea-dhcp4.conf, reason: cannot lock socket lockfile, /tmp/kea4-ctrl-socket.lock, : Resource temporarily unavailable

ERROR [kea-dhcp4.dhcp4.0x220050812000] DHCP4_INIT_FAIL failed to initialize Kea server: configuration error using file '/usr/local/etc/kea/kea-dhcp4.conf': cannot lock socket lockfile, /tmp/kea4-ctrl-socket.lock, : Resource temporarily unavailable

For some reason (I don't know) the DHCP stopped working and after that it's not able to restart

Gertjan

@Overlord

Know issue.
The kea process 'stopped without cleaning up', this event is also known as a 'crash'.
pfSense restart the process ... but there is an issue : the previous pid file, containing the pid of the previous now defunct kea process, is still there ... the startup fails.

What I did : (as I wanted it to start anyway, and the issue is a bit silly) : I modded kea's shell startup scripts so it unconditionally deletes the PID file if one exists during startup.
or
Say to yourself : No way, I use ISC.
or
Delete the pid file manually and retry.

I've been using kea for several weeks, despite the fact I've read the blog post about the user conditions, caveats, warnings and other fine print. It worked pretty well, and I haven't been confronted with crashes. My LANs are small, 50 devices or so, and a captive portal with a boatload of guest users. Don't recall having any issues.
I had to abandon kea as another test project obliged me to use "DHCP options" and these are also on the kea-not-yet list.

zkhcohen

This issue has impacted me on numerous occasions, only when the service is killed in an unclean fashion.

I also can't replicate the behavior by creating dummy lock files -- the service will still start.

Due to this unexplained behavior, I implemented a hacky workaround: creating a cron job which executes the following script:

[ `keactrl status | grep 'DHCPv4 server:' | awk '{print $3}'` = "inactive" ] && [ -f /tmp/kea4-ctrl-socket.lock ] && rm -f /tmp/kea4-ctrl-socket.lock && keactrl start -s dhcp4

noisyjohn

@maverickws
The same here ,,, But I found the solution:
login with an sftp client

directory /root/tmp chmod 777 (allow all)
delete /root/tmp/kea4-ctrl-socket
delete /root/tmp/kea4-ctrl-socket.lock
restart Kea DHCP server (the sockets are automaticaly created)
done!
however this issue may hapen again after some days ...

maverickws

@noisyjohn Hi there and thank you for your input.

However, I have been forced out of KEA.
The reasons are described in this topic:
Ater Kea for 1 year, reverted back to ISC

cmcdonald

I believe we now have a fix for this. Keep an eye out for a public beta of 24.11 very soon.

zkhcohen

@cmcdonald Is there any intent to release this in the Community Edition? It's now been over a year since the last major version release, and the issues are stacking up. It's starting to feel like the project is stagnating.

Gertjan

@zkhcohen said in Kea DHCP stops working:

and the issues are stacking up ...

This thread, this issue, only exists in 24.03.
It concerns KEA, the 'new' DHCP server/client that is going to replace ISC DHCP in the future. The latter is used in 2.7.2 and is working very well - I'm using it also in 24.03.

Right now, no one really wants 'new versions' as most of us try to deal with 24H2 and its 'new things' that no one was asking for, but we still got (to debug) it ...

zkhcohen

@Gertjan I can personally confirm that this issue is present in CE 2.7.2 with the same symptoms.

I'm not sure how you can claim that no one "wants a new version" when there are numerous threads off and on this forum asking for exactly that.

Gertjan

@zkhcohen said in Kea DHCP stops working:

issue is present in CE 2.7.2 with the same symptoms.

Aha, so 2.7.2 has also the KEA !? I stand corrected.
I really had the impression that only pfSense Plus (24.03) had this test-drive KEA addition.

Easy way out then : keep the 30+ years tested an proved "DHCP ISC" and the issue will be gone.

datpif

I see this is still ongoing. I found a workaround via watchdog service. The script does a cleanup before attempting to restart the sevice

list itemmake sure you install the watchdog service in pfsense.
list Add the kea dhcp 4 service.
Shell into pfsense and change to /usr/local/etc/rc.d
list Create a backup of kea service script. cp kea kea.old
list edit the kea file and replace contents with script below

#!/bin/sh

# PROVIDE: kea
# REQUIRE: NETWORK netif routing    
# KEYWORD: shutdown

. /etc/rc.subr

name=kea
desc="Kea DHCP Server"
rcvar=kea_enable

load_rc_config $name

kea_enable=${kea_enable:-"NO"}

command="/usr/local/sbin/keactrl"
required_files="/usr/local/etc/${name}/keactrl.conf"

# Add cleanup function
cleanup_kea() {
    # Clean up stale lock files
    rm -f /tmp/kea4-ctrl-socket.lock
    # Kill any zombie processes
    pkill -9 kea-dhcp4
    # Wait for processes to die
    sleep 2
}

# Modify start command to include cleanup
start_cmd() {
    cleanup_kea
    ${command} start
    logger -t kea-watchdog "Kea DHCP4 started with cleanup"
}

# Modify stop command to include cleanup
stop_cmd() {
    ${command} stop
    cleanup_kea
    logger -t kea-watchdog "Kea DHCP4 stopped with cleanup"
}

status_cmd="$command status"
reload_cmd="$command reload"
extra_commands="reload"

run_rc_command "$1"

Watchdog should auto restart the service