'static-networking' fails to start

'static-networking' fails to start

[Fabio Natali]

(I've been trying to post this as a follow-up to 64653@debbugs.gnu.org
but my email gets rejected as the issue is archived. I wasn't able to
un-archive the issue, apparently, so I'm now sending this
here. Apologies if you receive it twice.)

Hi,

I've been trying to reconfigure a machine from static IPv4 to static
dual-stack or IPv6-only. I followed one⁰ of the examples in the manual,
so I'd think I got the syntax right.

Once the reconfiguration has taken place and when restarting the
networking service, I get this error:

,----
| herd: error: exception caught while executing 'start' on service 'networking':
| Throw to key `%exception' with args `("#<&netlink-response-error errno: 17>")'.
`----

It'd seem to be relevant to bug report 64653¹?

Do you know what this might be related to and what I can do to solve it?

This happens on an up-to-date Guix system.

Thanks, best wishes, Fabio.


⁰ https://guix.gnu.org/manual/devel/en/html_node/Networking-Setup.html#index-static_002dnetworking
¹ https://issues.guix.gnu.org/64653


-- 
Fabio Natali
https://fabionatali.com

Re: 'static-networking' fails to start

[Felix Lechner via]

Hi Fabio,

On Mon, Mar 25 2024, Fabio Natali wrote:

> I wasn't able to un-archive

Debbugs was down. I unarchived Bug#64653 for you.

> I've been trying to reconfigure a machine from static IPv4 to static
> dual-stack or IPv6-only.

I also had issues with static networking two years ago.  Here is what
worked for me at the time. [1]

Kind regards
Felix

[1] https://codeberg.org/lechner/system-config/src/commit/46a0e48fc5ae38f7e6bfb86527ec2bbabc272c71/host/letbox/operating-system.scm#L176-L192

Re: 'static-networking' fails to start

[Fabio Natali]

Hi Felix,

Thanks for getting back to me.

On 2024-03-25, 08:49 -0700, Felix Lechner <felix.lechner@lease-up.com> wrote:
> Debbugs was down. I unarchived Bug#64653 for you.

Great - I'll be following up on that bug report from now on then.

> I also had issues with static networking two years ago.  Here is what
> worked for me at the time. [1]

I think I tried that (commenting out the default gateway part, which
might be picked up automatically by means of Router Advertisement
RA?). I'll definitely try again once in front of the machine and update
the bug report with my findings.

Thanks for now!

Cheers, Fabio.

Re: 'static-networking' fails to start

[Roman Riabenko via]

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Hello Fabio

On Mon, 2024-03-25 at 16:05 +0000, Fabio Natali wrote:
> I think I tried that (commenting out the default gateway part, which
> might be picked up automatically by means of Router Advertisement
> RA?). I'll definitely try again once in front of the machine and
> update the bug report with my findings.

I attest that I succeeded this weekend by following the instructions in
the latest (development) version of the guix manual without commenting
anything out. I've just finished updating the system and rebooted to
confirm that it still works with the latest updates.

I do not know what your error means but among the things that I was
unsure about I remember the following two.

First, I almost missed that "static-networking" is a data type that
must go in a list under "static-networking-service-type" as explained
in the previous example in the same manual. Instead, I also added
"%loopback-static-networking", though it produced a different error
which clearly explained that loopback is already implicitly included.

Second, I was unsure where to get the IPv6 default gateway. I tried the
"ip -6 route" command. As far as I remember, it provided a link-local
address. Though, I see both the link-local and the global address now
in the output on another autoconfigured (SLAAC) device. I just checked
the gateway address on the router instead. I included only the global
address.

The only other difference in my configuration is that I indicated a DNS
server for IPv6 too.

I hope this may help.

Roman

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Re: 'static-networking' fails to start

[Fabio Natali]

On Mon, 2024-03-25 at 20:12 +0200, Roman Riabenko via wrote:
> I attest that I succeeded this weekend by following the instructions
> in the latest (development) version of the guix manual without
> commenting anything out.

Hi Roman, thanks for confirming this.

> Second, I was unsure where to get the IPv6 default gateway. I tried
> the "ip -6 route" command.

Yes, that's what I did, i.e. I tried with the link-local address and
that failed. Unsure whether this is the expected behaviour? Perhaps
someone might confirm.

As reported earlier on this thread, I was able to make it work by
dropping the IPv6 gateway altogether, as suggested by Felix.

Thanks for sharing your settings/experience with this. 🙏🙏🙏

Cheers, Fabio.


-- 
Fabio Natali
https://fabionatali.com