Missing PPPoE manual disconnect/connect

[i.schmidt]

Hi

We recently upgraded from a 23 version of opnSense to the latest 24.4_5 business version. Before the update, there was an Option under "Interfaces - Overview" right of the <PPPoE IF> entry, called disconnect. Since the overview was heavily overhauled, this option seems to be gone.
Has it moved somewhere else, or do i really need to disable the pppoe interface in the interface settings?

Sometimes i just need a quick disconnect and reconnect the interface, so this is somewhat annoying.
Any tips are appreciated.
thanks!

[N00bOner]

Latest 24.1.8 (non-business) - Reload option for quick connect/disconnect on Interfaces: Overview
No idea if you have same UI tho

[franco]

The reload is still there, but the disconnect/connect was deemed spurious.


Cheers,
Franco

[i.schmidt]

Thanks for clarification, I thought I was missing something.
Will it come back?
It was a very nice function to easily stop and start connections when troubleshooting. Enabling and disabling the interface works, but it's less convenient.

[franco]

I'll keep your report in mind and it's also true what you said that's all the button actually did here. If more need arises in the future we will reconsider.


Cheers,
Franco

[i.schmidt]

I would like to get back to this problem. I had a feeling this would bite me and I was right.

We use a HA setup. When we switch to the secondary node, we need to disable the PPPoE connection on the primary, in ordner for the secondary node to dial in. (I know this is not ideal and we are working on a solution for this)
In the past I could use the connect/disconnect buttons in the overview to do this. This had the effect, that the interface stayed up but was disconnected.
Now I need to use "disable" in the interface settings. This causes the Interface to be down. In this state the Interface cannot be used to configure e.g. an OpenVPN Server for it.

So if I am running on the secondary node and need to make a change to the config, I do this on the primary and then sync. This does not work anymore because now when I open e.g. OpenVPN configs, the binding Interface for the Service automatically jumps to the first available Interface because the PPPoE Interface isn't available anymore.

This really screws with the configuration of Services. I bet there might be some other things going wrong too.
Please consider reimplementation of "connect/disconnect" functionality for dialup Connections like PPPoE.

[Monviech (Cedrik)]

For automatic PPPoE failover you can do the following:

- Assign the parent interfaces of the modem interfaces in "Interfaces: Assignments"
- Put internal IP addresses on them (e.g. 192.168.253.2/24 and 192.168.253.3/24)
- Put a CARP VIP on this interface (e.g. 192.168.253.1/24)
- Enable the following on both firewalls: System: High Availability: Settings: Disconnect dialup interfaces

Now the Firewall with CARP BACKUP will deactivate its PPPoE connection, and the one with MASTER will automatically dial in.

I have used that in the past with multiple PPPoE connections. It works around 95% of the time, if there is lots of failover flapping it will fail eventually.

I think both firewalls need a restart for it to get initialized properly, though unsure.

[i.schmidt]

Thanks for the instructions. I did some testing in the past with these settings and sadly i never found it working reliably. It almost never worked. Maybe this has to do with the PPPoE connection needing a VLAN tag.

I will change to letting the modems dial in and use a switch, CARP and 1:1 NAT to expose the Connection to the firewalls CARP IP.
But I need a lot of testing for that because double NAT (VOIP Server -> FW -> Modem) does not fare well with our VOIP Setup somehow. So it will take some time to do this.

[Monviech (Cedrik)]

Yeah I only used this without having the OPNsense tag the PPPoE pakets. Maybe there is some jank when VLANs are involved.

EDIT: If you use a manages Switch anyway, you could receive the pakets of the PPPoE interfaces untagged from the OPNsense, and then tag them on the switch before they go to the modem.