I will be honest here and admit that I do not know quite if this is that FreeBSD is doing IPv6 right and linux is implementing some hack to get around a problem or if FreeBSD is doing something wrong. Its a little to low level for me, so I hope someone with a little more knowledge can clarify the issue. Ok so I grabbed a cheap VPS to run a small mail server on, it is XEN; all works lovely, virtio etc.. but for ipv6 the host implements a shared gateway for all its clients, notable: 2a07:4580:b0d::1/48 I have a /64 in my command on this range; 2a07:4580:b0d:27e::/64 for which I use 2a07:4580:b0d:27e::1/128 for my mail server. Now the issues; for me to reach that gateway from that prefix I needed to set: ifconfig_vtnet0_ipv6="inet6 2a07:4580:b0d:27e::1/48" ipv6_defaultrouter="2a07:4580:b0d::1" because obviously, my assigned /64 could not reach there gateway, from what I understand from the IPv6 folks I should be able to simply set the gateway to the interface without such a hack, but once again realistically; no idea. Now for the actual problem.. the ipv6 is spotty, 95% loss and what is going on is there gateway seems to believe I am not really using the address; if I do use it; it temporarily 'comes up', so I did this: $ cat /etc/rc.local daemon -f ping6 -i 2 -s 1 2a07:4580:b0d::1 and wallah perfect working ipv6, I assume that some sort of 'neigbhour notification' is not taking place, and the ping is enforcing it. But I also have several linux VPS's with these guys and they are all fine, hence my reason for calling out for help to figure out what exactly is wrong. -- Cheers paul
Just a clarification; 'because obviously, my assigned /64 could not reach there gateway, from what I understand from the IPv6 folks I should be able to simply set the gateway to the interface without such a hack, but once again realistically; no idea.' If I do attempt to set the gateway on the interface, it cannot 'find' the gateway almost like it was having trouble looking it up.
What is in your routing table? "netstat -rnf inet6" This should be collected what IPv6 is working (pings running) and when it's not. What about ndp? "ndp -a" and "ndp -p" Less important but possibly useful, what does your interface config look like? "ifconfig vtnet0"
Thank you for the reply; the information you requested is as follows $ netstat -rnf inet6 you have mail Routing tables Internet6: Destination Gateway Flags Netif Expire ::/96 ::1 UGRS lo0 default 2a07:4580:b0d::1 UGS vtnet0 ::1 link#2 UH lo0 ::ffff:0.0.0.0/96 ::1 UGRS lo0 2a07:4580:b0d::/48 link#1 U vtnet0 2a07:4580:b0d:27e::1 link#1 UHS lo0 fe80::/10 ::1 UGRS lo0 fe80::%vtnet0/64 link#1 U vtnet0 fe80::216:3cff:fe81:38d8%vtnet0 link#1 UHS lo0 fe80::%lo0/64 link#2 U lo0 fe80::1%lo0 link#2 UHS lo0 ff02::/16 ::1 UGRS lo0 $ ndp -a Neighbor Linklayer Address Netif Expire S Flags 2a07:4580:b0d::1 00:05:73:a0:00:09 vtnet0 23h59m59s S R mail.tmp.group 00:16:3c:81:38:d8 vtnet0 permanent R fe80::a693:4cff:fe63:547f%vtnet0 a4:93:4c:63:54:7f vtnet0 expired P 3 fe80::216:3cff:fe81:38d8%vtnet0 00:16:3c:81:38:d8 vtnet0 permanent R $ ndp -p 2a07:4580:b0d::/48 if=vtnet0 flags=LO vltime=infinity, pltime=infinity, expire=Never, ref=1 No advertising router fe80::%vtnet0/64 if=vtnet0 flags=LAO vltime=infinity, pltime=infinity, expire=Never, ref=0 No advertising router fe80::%lo0/64 if=lo0 flags=LAO vltime=infinity, pltime=infinity, expire=Never, ref=0 No advertising router $ ifconfig vtnet0 vtnet0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500 options=6c07bb<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,JUMBO_MTU,VLAN_HWCSUM,TSO4,TSO6,LRO,VLAN_HWTSO,LINKSTATE,RXCSUM_IPV6,TXCSUM_IPV6> ether 00:16:3c:81:38:d8 inet 185.157.232.30 netmask 0xffff0000 broadcast 185.157.255.255 inet6 fe80::216:3cff:fe81:38d8%vtnet0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x1 inet6 2a07:4580:b0d:27e::1 prefixlen 48 nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL> media: Ethernet 10Gbase-T <full-duplex> status: active
(In reply to Paul G Webster from comment #3) At the time that you collected this, everything looks good. The default route is pointing to the correct link. (link#1) and all ndp data looks correct. One suggestion is to accept router advertisements. To do this, add "accept_rtadv" to you ifconfig_vtnet0_ipv6 line in rc.conf. This will cause your system to accept router advertisements on your LAN. Unless you have another local system configured to do IPv6 routing, this should be fine. I also doubt it will help, but it might be worth a try. (If it does not help, I'd remove it.) You might want to monitor the default route and the NDP for 2a07:4580:b0d:27e::1 to see if they are stable. It sure sounds like something is flapping when the link is inactive for some period. My guess is NDP, but that is far from certain. N.B. I was very active in working with IPv6 for over 15 years, but I've been retired for six years and I'll admit that I am not as sharp on it as I once was. Worse, Frontier, my ISP about half the year does not yet support IPv6 customer connections.
root@mail:~ # ping6 google.com PING6(56=40+8+8 bytes) 2a07:4580:b0d:27e::1 --> 2a00:1450:4009:80f::200e 16 bytes from 2a00:1450:4009:80f::200e, icmp_seq=0 hlim=55 time=7.064 ms 16 bytes from 2a00:1450:4009:80f::200e, icmp_seq=1 hlim=55 time=6.720 ms 16 bytes from 2a00:1450:4009:80f::200e, icmp_seq=2 hlim=55 time=6.686 ms 16 bytes from 2a00:1450:4009:80f::200e, icmp_seq=3 hlim=55 time=6.556 ms 16 bytes from 2a00:1450:4009:80f::200e, icmp_seq=4 hlim=55 time=6.605 ms 16 bytes from 2a00:1450:4009:80f::200e, icmp_seq=5 hlim=55 time=6.741 ms 16 bytes from 2a00:1450:4009:80f::200e, icmp_seq=6 hlim=55 time=6.802 ms 16 bytes from 2a00:1450:4009:80f::200e, icmp_seq=7 hlim=55 time=6.934 ms 16 bytes from 2a00:1450:4009:80f::200e, icmp_seq=8 hlim=55 time=6.600 ms 16 bytes from 2a00:1450:4009:80f::200e, icmp_seq=9 hlim=55 time=6.805 ms 16 bytes from 2a00:1450:4009:80f::200e, icmp_seq=10 hlim=55 time=6.670 ms 16 bytes from 2a00:1450:4009:80f::200e, icmp_seq=11 hlim=55 time=6.668 ms 16 bytes from 2a00:1450:4009:80f::200e, icmp_seq=12 hlim=55 time=7.080 ms 16 bytes from 2a00:1450:4009:80f::200e, icmp_seq=25 hlim=55 time=6.864 ms 16 bytes from 2a00:1450:4009:80f::200e, icmp_seq=26 hlim=55 time=6.725 ms 16 bytes from 2a00:1450:4009:80f::200e, icmp_seq=27 hlim=55 time=6.666 ms ^C --- google.com ping6 statistics --- 28 packets transmitted, 16 packets received, 42.9% packet loss round-trip min/avg/max/std-dev = 6.556/6.762/7.080/0.151 ms root@mail:~ # # Known working ifconfig_vtnet0_ipv6="inet6 2a07:4580:b0d:27e::1/48 accept_rtadv" ipv6_defaultrouter="2a07:4580:b0d::1" No love still the same fault after I comment out: root@mail:~ # cat /etc/rc.local daemon -f ping6 -i 2 -s 1 2a07:4580:b0d::1
As an aside, I am on virgin media in the uk, they do not even have an upgrade path for ipv6 yet :P so I feel your pain
A little more on this fault; with the help of the host we have a working solution, from the host them self: --quote FreeBSD appears to use the link local address on the interface to send neighbor advertisements for the addresses it would like to be routed towards it, unfortunately our side only allows you to send neighbor advertisements from an allowed allocated prefix not an fe80:: address. I have added an exception for this, could you try stopping your work around for now and seeing if IPv6 carries on working? --/quote To cut a story short and many tickets later yes in fact the work around did work, the host is using 'ebtables' on there host; they have contacted the panel provider hoping they can patch the upstream. Will update if I can get a little more detail on what the patch was or a copy of it hopefully :)
The host provided the following information for what they had to do with ebtables to get freebsd working; --quote We use ebtables on the hosts to prevent IP stealing. We have a chain setup for each VM which basically says "this VMs mac can only use these IPs", this is what was dropping your v6 NA's. The patch to allow the link local address is simply: ebtables -A kvm922.0 -p IPv6 --ip6-src fe80::/10 -j ACCEPT With kvm922.0 being the chain that your VM belongs to. --/quote
(In reply to Paul G Webster from comment #8) That would explain it. I am very surprised that Linux does not use the link-local address for routing information. That was one of the main reason for the link-local implementation in IPv6. Can someone confirm that Linux does not use link-local as the default NDP communication connection? Yes, ebtables (on linux) should always allow link-local. No, all routing is not over link-local. Protocols that communicate to non-adjacent nodes (e.g. BGP) cannot use link-local. Glad you tracked this down. You saved the next guy problems.