SOLVED Networking oddness

[Arthur Hanlon]

Hi all,

Wonder if anyone else is experiencing this? After a reboot to replace some drives, my Freenas server seems to have stolen the IP of one of my jails as it’s own despite having a static IP assigned. I also noticed that it can also sometimes grab an IP from DHCP too which is find extremely odd. The freenas machine also seems to be showing the jail IPs as aliases which it’s never done before and is not actually showing the main statically allocated IP on the dashboard.

The problem I have now is that the jail who’s IP it seems to have stolen is that of my Plex server so none of my clients can acces it as they think they are accessing the freenas box itself.

I’ve never come across this before but wonder if it’s a known issue and if not, is it worth raising a bug report?

EDIT: Added images to show issue

 

[pschatz100]

More information about your hardware and your configuration would be helpful.

How did you set up your jails? Is VNET enabled for your Plex jail? Plex requires this for all functions to work properly, and the IP address should not show up as an alias.

 

[Arthur Hanlon]

The odd things is, this has only just happened with no changes to anything other than swapping out 2TB for 8TB disks.

With regards hardware and config. I have a Gen8 Microserver with 16GB ECC RAM.

I don't have VNET enabled in any of my jails and can't recall every having it enabled either but, I could enable it to see if that resolves the issue. In saying that, all jails are showing as aliases so maybe I've just configured it incorrectly?

 

[Arthur Hanlon]

Tried to change to VNET and the jails get no network connectivity at all. ifconfig only shows loopback.

Disable VNET and as you say, the IPs of the jails start appearing as aliases on the Freenas dashboard again.

I've clearly surpassed my level of understanding on this one so would appreciate any help you can offer.

 

[pschatz100]

Well, you haven't told us anything about how your jails are set up - so it is not possible to comment. I suspect however, that something is not set correctly. VNET in the jails should work. Try searching the posts for Gen8 Microserver. Somebody might have posted some useful advice about setting them up.

Good luck.

 

[Arthur Hanlon]

The jails have been setup using the jails wizard and nothing advanced has been touched. Each jail has a static IP and when VNET is enabled, they don't work, I'm not sure what other information to provide, sorry. Is there anywhere that I can look for logs to provide additional information for you?

I tried setting up a new jail from scratch and suffered the same issue just in case the way they create using he wizard changed between versions.

Cheers for the replies so far though :)

 

[pschatz100]

What version of FreeNAS are you using? Do you have any tunables configured?

When you created your jail, did you request VNET from the menu, or attempt to add it later after the jail already existed? During setup, VNET is available from the Advanced Jail Creation button.
As part of setting up the VNET networking stack, were you careful to set all the jail's network properties for interface, address, netmask, and default router properly? What are the values you used? All these have to be correct for the system to run. It is very easy to overlook something.

 

[Arthur Hanlon]

Thanks for the guidance.

Currently using FreeNAS-11.2-U4

Never setup VNET when creating the jail so tried to add in when I noticed the original oddness after the jail was created.

When I creatd the jail I didn't setup anything other than the static IP as VNET wasn't originally used. When creating I selected bge0 as that is my only active NIC, static IP of 192.168.1.12, netmask of 24, default router 192.168.1.1 however now that I look at that I wonder if it should also include a netmask and read 192.168.1.1/24? Also, if I select VNET, I get an additional interface vnet0 which I attach to so not sure if that part is correct either.

Would you want to see the network properties tab of the jail too?

 

[pschatz100]

The properties tab of the jail would be a good starting point. Do a screenshot of the basic properties and the network properties. I think the "oddness" that you refer to is a consequence of something not being set up right.

 

[Arthur Hanlon]

Attached, cheers.

 

[pschatz100]

It looks like you have your jail set for a shared IP, so yes... the system is doing what it is set up to do. However, it does not look like you have all your networking parameters set up properly.

From the main networking panel (your Primary NIC) you have your DNS set to an internal address only. This will mean that your FreeNAS system won't be able to access anything outside your network - including system updates or media updates for Plex. Is that what you had in mind? If not, you need to supply a second DNS: most people would use the one supplied by their internet provider or they use Google name servers 8.8.8.8 and/or 8.8.4.4. I use the one supplied by my provider. Take care of this first.

Them you should try enabling VNET on your jail. working through the new GUI:

1) Stop the jail
2) Tick the use VNET box in the jail properties
3) When using VNET, the IPv4 interface should be set to VNET0. Make certain the Address, Netmask, and Default Router are set properly
4) From the Network Properties, check that the interface is set to something like: vnet0:bridge0 or vnet0:bridge1. The exact value will depend on your system, but will likely be one or the other.
5) Once everything is set properly, then start the jail.

I set up my jails by hand, so I have not used the GUI to set up jails but it looks like everything you need is there.

Good luck.

 

[Arthur Hanlon]

Thanks for the reply. Setting up jails by hand seems way above my head.

The single IP address is that of my Pihole and having it set like this has never and still doesn't prevent the freenas box from accessing the internet. All jails also have internet access and I can update plex using pkg just fine. I use OpenDNS so can add in those too but I'd rather all traffic is filtered through the Pihole. Worth a shot to see if it makes a difference I guess.

The problem seems to be that when I enable VNET, the jail looks like it's not even got a network card.

I'll make sure to give your steps a shot though and post back an update, cheers.

 

[pschatz100]

Thanks for the reply. Setting up jails by hand seems way above my head.

The single IP address is that of my Pihole and having it set like this has never and still doesn't prevent the freenas box from accessing the internet. All jails also have internet access and I can update plex using pkg just fine. I use OpenDNS so can add in those too but I'd rather all traffic is filtered through the Pihole. Worth a shot to see if it makes a difference I guess.

I'm not sure what you are doing with your Pihole, but I would add the OpenDNS information to your DNS for now - just to eliminate one potential problem item. You can always remove it later, once everything is working.

The problem seems to be that when I enable VNET, the jail looks like it's not even got a network card.

Exactly. Because you do not have VNET set up correctly. See my comments from the previous post. The GUI looks like it has the options you need to set things up.

 

[Arthur Hanlon]

Well, seems to now be working now with VNET and I think this comment was what did it:

When using VNET, the IPv4 interface should be set to VNET0

Haven't changed anything else other than this and it works, jails now pick up and IP perfectly.

Thanks for your help on this @pschatz100, much appreciated :)