VLANs in 1.3

[Roberto Greiner]

Hi,

I would like to report what appears to be a bug with vlans on Monowall 1.3

I´m running a Xen Citrix 5.5 (latest version), running Monowall 1.3
machines. To each machine I allocated 128MB RAM.

The problem I ran into is that when trying to create vlans, it didn´t
work. The web page (and console) says that everything was set properly,
but the network does not work. I´ve used Wireshark to read the packets
coming out of the Monowall box, and confirmed that the packets are
coming out without any vlan tag.

I´ve installed a Debian virtual box on the same machine, and vlans work
properly.

Also, I´ve downgraded the same virtual box to Monowall version 1.235,
and without almost any changes, it worked. The only change required was
to rename to interfaces. 1.235 calls the NICs rl0 and rl1. Monowall 1.3
calls them re0 and re1. All I had to do was to correct that on the
console, and the 1.235 downgraded box started working with vlans.

I´ve tried to invert LAN and WAN boards (Using the Intel onboard NIC as
LAN instead of as WAN). Didn´t work either.

The physical server is a Core 2 Duo 3Ghz, 4GB RAM, 1 82567LM-3 Intel NIC
(onboard), 1 D-Link DGE-530T NIC.

Each virtual server was set with 128MB RAM, 500MB disk (minimum that Xen
allocates)

I´ve reported that on the Monowall Support list.

Is that a bug on the re driver? Monowall?

Thanks,

Roberto Greiner

[Manuel Kasper]

The problem I ran into is that when trying to create vlans, it didn´t work. The web page (and console) says that everything was set properly, but the network does not work. I´ve used Wireshark to read the packets coming out of the Monowall box, and confirmed that the packets are coming out without any vlan tag.
...
Is that a bug on the re driver? Monowall?

Most likely a bug in either FreeBSD 6.4's if_re or Xen. Real-world RealTek controllers that use the re(4) driver support hardware based VLAN tagging, and FreeBSD uses that feature if it's available. Perhaps it's a problem in the interaction between FreeBSD and Xen? (e.g. FreeBSD thinks the virtual NIC does "hardware" based VLAN tagging, when in fact it does not)

You could try disabling VLAN hardware tagging by entering the following commands on <http://m0n0wall/exec.php>:

ifconfig re0 -vlanhwtag
ifconfig re1 -vlanhwtag

(only lasts until the next reboot)

Regards,

Manuel

[Roberto Greiner]

Ok,

right on spot. The command made the interface work. Any idea on what I
could do so that I don´t have to add this command manually each time?

Hmm, probably better also to report this as a bug to Citrix, I guess....

Thanks,

Roberto Greiner

Post by Manuel Kasper

The problem I ran into is that when trying to create vlans, it didn´t work. The web page (and console) says that everything was set properly, but the network does not work. I´ve used Wireshark to read the packets coming out of the Monowall box, and confirmed that the packets are coming out without any vlan tag.
...
Is that a bug on the re driver? Monowall?

Most likely a bug in either FreeBSD 6.4's if_re or Xen. Real-world RealTek controllers that use the re(4) driver support hardware based VLAN tagging, and FreeBSD uses that feature if it's available. Perhaps it's a problem in the interaction between FreeBSD and Xen? (e.g. FreeBSD thinks the virtual NIC does "hardware" based VLAN tagging, when in fact it does not)
ifconfig re0 -vlanhwtag
ifconfig re1 -vlanhwtag
(only lasts until the next reboot)
Regards,
Manuel

[Manuel Kasper]

right on spot. The command made the interface work. Any idea on what I could do so that I donŽt have to add this command manually each time?

You can add it to the <system> section of your config.xml (use the backup/restore feature), wrapped in <shellcmd> tags, like so:

<system>
...
<shellcmd>/sbin/ifconfig re0 -vlanhwtag</shellcmd>
<shellcmd>/sbin/ifconfig re1 -vlanhwtag</shellcmd>
</system>

See also: http://doc.m0n0.ch/handbook/faq-hiddenopts.html

- Manuel

[Roberto Greiner]

Ok. Some googling indicates that the current version of Xen really has
some issues with vlans and 2 NICs. I hope they fix it soon.

Tks...

Roberto Greiner

Post by Manuel Kasper

right on spot. The command made the interface work. Any idea on what I could do so that I don´t have to add this command manually each time?

<system>
...
<shellcmd>/sbin/ifconfig re0 -vlanhwtag</shellcmd>
<shellcmd>/sbin/ifconfig re1 -vlanhwtag</shellcmd>
</system>
See also: http://doc.m0n0.ch/handbook/faq-hiddenopts.html
- Manuel