os-ddclient - Gateway group as monitored interface in Multi WAN configurations

[buzzkillingtonne]

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Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. os-ddclient is not currently allowing selection of a gateway group when using muti WAN, only one individual WAN interface can be selected. The os-dyndns plugin is capable of this, and it allows it to check the IP of the currently active interface in the gateway group.

Describe the solution you'd like I would like the ability to select a gateway group as the monitored interface so that when the WAN fails over the DNS gets updates with the new IP address.

Describe alternatives you've considered Using os-dyndns, but that package will be removed in 22.7 as it is currently deprecated.

Additional context Add any other context or screenshots about the feature request here.

[AdSchellevis]

Apparently you could still select a group, it just doesn't really do anything other then choosing the default gateway (see https://github.com/opnsense/plugins/commit/0454288b11fdee919546941ac3259d082b5d6782), which is the default behaviour.

[buzzkillingtonne]

I just tested and selected my primary WAN interface to monitor, since I cannot select the group. This results in it not seeing an IP when I test my WAN failover causing DNS to not get updated with the IP of the secondary WAN interface. I also tried none as the interface to monitor out of curiosity and as expected got the same result. WARNING: unable to determine IP address

If I select my secondary WAN interface to monitor, it at least tries to change the IP, but I'm having other issues with it that are causing it to fail. WARNING: file /var/tmp/ddclient.cache, line 4: Invalid Value for keyword 'ip' = ''

[hauserkristof]

Dear @AdSchellevis !

I have also tested this on:

Key	Value
Type	opnsense-business
Version	22.4.2
Architecture	amd64
Flavour	OpenSSL
Commit	f350d31bc

With os-ddclient version: 1.7_2

I also cannot select a GW Group:

This is also a step backwards from the legacy ddclient plugin 😞

[AdSchellevis]

Dear @hauserkristof,

I'm not sure why you insist on stalking people, gateway groups didn't work correctly as you can't select a bunch of addresses to bind to (so you en up with one which might or might not be predictable at all). If you feel you need to design an option with gateway groups and ddlcient, just open a PR for discussion how you think it should work.

As my collegae already clearly explained the reasons why we're not going to maintain dead code any longer (https://github.com/opnsense/plugins/issues/3037#issuecomment-1188735632), it doesn't really help poking people all the time..

Best regards.

Ad

[NigelWhatling]

I'm confused. Are you saying that the legacy functionality (dyndns) didn't work? (certainly did for me) Or is it that the new (ddclient) doesn't work?

[hauserkristof]

Hi @NigelWhatling: With the new one (ddclient) I cannot set GW groups

Thanks @AdSchellevis , I understand that you do not maintain the old dyndns option anymore, and the reasons are clear too.

I just would like to have nearly the same functionality in the new ddclient, because at my site it is really useful. I'm not trying to poke anyone, just to get information and features.

Thank you for the recommendation, if I will have the proper time, I may open a PR to discuss this.

Best regards,

Kristóf

[NigelWhatling]

@hauserkristof, that pretty much sums up my experience, too.

It had only just clicked with me last night that it wasn't a case of re-writing an existing plugin but more wrapping a new base project. I'm assuming that it's the underlying ddclient project that does not support GW groups and not just that the plugin doesn't allow selection. That's a shame because I, like you, have found that legacy functionality incredibly useful.

Would love to help out with this somehow. But I'm not sure I understand enough about how the networking/configuration works to know what to ask for. Certainly wouldn't have a hope of assisting development-wise with a Perl project. 🙁

[buzzkillingtonne]

I found that I get a least some of the functionality by using freedns as the method and checking force SSL and monitoring none for interface. Unfortunately this means I must rely on a third party for the DNS check but it works at least.

I use CloudFlare as my provider.

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[putnam]

I use this and am surprised it is not part of the new client. I'm using the old one for now but the warning about its deprecation is spooking me. It's very useful to be able to point a ddns client to a gateway group. If you are in a multi-wan setup you generally will want the currently-functioning IP to be represented by your hostname. It's also nice to setup groups with different priorities to be reflected by some hostname.

The current functionality is not to send every IP in the group, but rather whichever one is currently active. At least that's how it seems to work for me (and previously in pfSense where I recently came from).

Seems not too difficult to add support for this considering it's in the old plugin.

Edit: I now see there was some change in 2019 that broke this even in dyndns client, so it's just a coincidence it works at all for me right now.

Shouldn't it work like this:

1. Select a gateway group instead of an interface
2. For failover groups, ddclient picks the first tier that is available and reports that IP
3. Should ddclient even bother implementing balanced groups? Maybe not. Maybe just failover groups. But if it's not easy to differentiate in the UI, a balance group would ideally report all of the IPs that are currently live, if the DNS service supports it.

I am open to writing the patch, if the design is acceptable.

[AdSchellevis]

@putnam you're more or less bound to what ddclient has to offer in this case, but mixing interfaces and gateway (groups) is generally not a great idea in my humble opinion (these aren't the same type of entities). Functionally I wouldn't mind supporting an option to bind a service to multiple interfaces, I just don't expect ddclient offers anything usable here at the moment. If you do want to open a PR for discussion, that's certainly ok, might be easier to discuss pros and cons as well.