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AiCCU (GUI): odd behaviour when PoP is down
![[de]](/s/countries/de.gif) Shadow Hawkins on Sunday, 11 November 2007 18:47:48
Hello,
I have two tunnels to deham01.sixxs.net (Easynet Hamburg).
As I now noticed, this PoP is currently pinging on IPv4, but the TIC service seems down (which matches the state of deham01 on the PoP status page).
The odd thing is that the (current) Windows GUI version of AiCCU seems to behave different depending on the dynamic IP my ISP has currently assigned to my DSL line.
In one case the AiCCU GUI just shows a popup with the message "A service name is required" and when expanding the options (">>" button), there's nothing selectable but "Manual configuration". After typing "deham01.sixxs.net" into the host field, the "OK" button stays grayed out.
When using the command line version, "aiccu brokers" does NOT even show SixXS!
The other case: When I got an IPv4 from a different address range, SixXS is listed as available broker with the command line version and is also selectable in the GUI client.
After logging in, I can then see my two tunnels, but clicking "OK" does not result in any error message. When *double*-clicking the "OK" button, some exception terminates the process. This exception also occurs after double-clicking one of the tunnels and then single-clicking the "OK" button.
The exception is "Unhandled exception at 0x781453ea (msvcr80.dll) in aiccu-current-gui.exe: 0xC0000005: Access violation reading location 0x0046f000."
Does anyone of you
1. also have a tunnel to PoP deham01
2. also use the AiCCU GUI client
3. (optionally) also use a DSL line from Arcor Germany
and can confirm this behavior?
Thanks for your feedback,
Wolfgang
AiCCU (GUI): odd behaviour when PoP is down
I have two tunnels to deham01.sixxs.net (Easynet Hamburg).
As I now noticed, this PoP is currently pinging on IPv4, but the TIC service seems down (which matches the state of deham01 on the PoP status page).
deham01 is still routing packets for static proto-41 tunnels, just not for AYIYA and heartbeat tunnels. As AICCU is used mostly for the dynamic ones, the TIC service explains that to the user.
In one case the AiCCU GUI just shows a popup with the message "A service name is required" and when expanding the options (">>" button), there's nothing selectable but "Manual configuration".
This more sounds like a DNS problem. The Tunnel Brokers list is retrieved using DNS by doing a TXT query for _aiccu.sixxs.net. As this record is quite long, DNS over TCP is needed for fetching the record. A couple of DNS implementations and DNS services are broken here and then one won't get any response.
Try a different DNS server and see if that works.
After typing "deham01.sixxs.net" into the host field, the "OK" button stays grayed out.
It is always wrong to enter a PoP name anywhere in AICCU.
When using the command line version, "aiccu brokers" does NOT even show SixXS!
See the above DNS explanation. Btw this has nothing to do with a PoP being down.
The other case: When I got an IPv4 from a different address range, SixXS is listed as available broker with the command line version and is also selectable in the GUI client.
And most likely you are using a different DNS server there.
After logging in, I can then see my two tunnels, but clicking "OK" does not result in any error message. When *double*-clicking the "OK" button, some exception terminates the process. This exception also occurs after double-clicking one of the tunnels and then single-clicking the "OK" button. The exception is "Unhandled exception at 0x781453ea (msvcr80.dll) in aiccu-current-gui.exe: 0xC0000005: Access violation reading location 0x0046f000."
Now that is odd, but a completely separate problem. As this seems to be buried inside MFC though, and we are really busy (but a bit snowed in time-wise due to swapping countries and work-work) with the new version which does not use MFC anymore, I won't be checking into this though. Never seen or heard about that problem. Then again in general PoPs simply should not be down in the first case.
Unfortunately hardware and some software problems are not easily resolved.
Greets,
Jeroen
AiCCU (GUI): odd behaviour when PoP is down
Shadow Hawkins on Sunday, 11 November 2007 20:45:29
Hi Jeroen,
As AICCU is used mostly for the dynamic ones, the TIC service explains that to the user.
OK, I just was a bit confused that manual configuration is in fact "unusable" then for heartbeat tunnels...
This more sounds like a DNS problem.
I already thought this might be the problem... it depends on the IP range my dynamic IP is in and thus on the probably different DNS servers assigned to me.
The Tunnel Brokers list is retrieved using DNS by doing a TXT query for _aiccu.sixxs.net. As this record is quite long, DNS over TCP is needed for fetching the record. A couple of DNS implementations and DNS services are broken here and then one won't get any response.
Thanks for the hint, this should make it easy to track down the problem. I'll try to manually configure one of the root servers (for testing purposes only) when the problem reoccurs.
Now that is odd, but a completely separate problem. [...] Then again in general PoPs simply should not be down in the first case.
No problem... I never noticed this access violation before. As I'm currently setting up Debian on a ThinkPad that should then set up the tunnel, my days using the Windows GUI client are numbered:-)
Greets,
Wolfgang
AiCCU (GUI): odd behaviour when PoP is down
You can't use the root-servers directly as they don't support recursion. You can of course use your own bind/powerdns/etc based server to do queries.
AiCCU (GUI): odd behaviour when PoP is down
Shadow Hawkins on Sunday, 11 November 2007 21:16:08This more sounds like a DNS problem. The Tunnel Brokers list is retrieved using DNS by doing a TXT query for _aiccu.sixxs.net. As this record is quite long, DNS over TCP is needed for fetching the record. A couple of DNS implementations and DNS services are broken here and then one won't get any response.
I tried to query the servers dns<1-11>.arcor-ip.de and noticed that SixXS is not always reported at the same position in the result list of the DNS query...
Could now be 2 reasons:
- The used AVM Fritz!Box Fon 7170 (using some linux as firmware) has a problem here
- Windows XP SP2 has a problem here
I'll now do some manual DSL reconnects to force the assignment of different DNS servers... update will follow.
Greets,
Wolfgang
AiCCU (GUI): odd behaviour when PoP is down
The same position is not a problem, DNS re-orders records by default.
Windows XP SP2 works fine, this is in use by a lot of people.
I don't know about the AVM Fritz!Box though, but that probably has some Linux-based implementation which might have this issue.
One can actually run aiccu on the fritz!box directly from what I understood.
AiCCU (GUI): odd behaviour when PoP is down
Shadow Hawkins on Monday, 12 November 2007 09:50:24
Currently I always get the same 2 DNS servers assigned which seem to work as SixXS is always listed with "aiccu brokers". I'll wait until the problem reoccurs when the PoP is up again...
I also noticed that I get a "Unspecified error" when trying to query the TXT records directly from the FritzBox with nslookup (Windows version).
The 29.04.40 firmware of the FritzBox 7170 seems to use kernel_version=2.4.17_mvl21-malta-mips_fp_le. Do you know if these 2.4 versions are affected by the issue you mentioned?
Regards,
Wolfgang
AiCCU (GUI): odd behaviour when PoP is down
Shadow Hawkins on Monday, 12 November 2007 14:26:11I don't know about the AVM Fritz!Box though, but that probably has some Linux-based implementation which might have this issue.
I tried this with the current release firmware 29.04.40 for the Fritz!Box Fon 7170. The DNS on the box does definitely not handle DNS queries over TCP correctly. After getting an UDP response that is flagged as "message truncated" (containing 5 or 6 TXT records), a second request is sent over TCP, but the box simply rejects the connection with an ACK/RST... nslookup (Windows) returns "Unspecified error" then :-(
When manually changing the DNS server to one of those assigned by the ISP, the query over TCP succeeds and returns 10 TXT records (and the message is not flagged as truncated).
Is this the "issue" you mentioned above?
According to this, I'd say the order of records *is* important as long as only the UDP query works... if SixXS is among the first 6 records, it will be "found"... otherwise (SixXS among record 7-10) aiccu will not "see" it and thus fail.
I'll now contact AVM about this issue and ask them if (and when) this will be fixed (or if it's already fixed in a beta firmware).
One can actually run aiccu on the fritz!box directly from what I understood.
Googled a bit about this... AVM firmwares don't support IPv6. But there are "mod" versions that can be built with IPv6 support and other packages like aiccu, radvd etc. I think, I'll also try this when I have some more time:-)
Regards,
Wolfgang
AiCCU (GUI): odd behaviour when PoP is down
Shadow Hawkins on Wednesday, 14 November 2007 17:08:39I don't know about the AVM Fritz!Box though, but that probably has some Linux-based implementation which might have this issue.
The first feedback from the AVM support concerning the DNS issue reads as follows (translated to English):
"The FRITZ!Box has a DNS relay + DNS caching, but no DNS server. Your observation does thus not state an error."
Hmm, I'd say a "DNS relay" should also relay all DNS queries, but I did not find any clear specs for a "DNS relay"...
Apart from that the used "dnsmasq" package supports TCP queries since Version 2.10. I did not yet find out, which version of dnsmasq is used in the 29.04.40 firmware of the Fritz!Box, but replied to AVM if they could update their dnsmasq or just enable the feature in future versions...
Greets,
Wolfgang
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on Sunday, 11 November 2007 19:55:34
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