[strongSwan] peer not responding

Stephen Feyrer stephen.feyrer at greensill.com
Thu Aug 8 18:16:37 CEST 2019


Hi there,

My situation is an odd one.  I have on my desktop a Linux Virtual Machine (Debian) running in virtual box which I need to setup a IPSec/l2tp VPN client thus to be able to provide guidance to external users to set up their connections.

In virtualbox I have set rules to forward the ports 50, 51, 500 and 4500 to the VM.

I have an officeVPN.conf file which looks like:

conn officeVPN
        aggressive=yes
        type=tunnel
        authby=psk
        keyexchange=ikev1
        left=%defaultroute
        leftprotoport=udp/l2tp
        right= 50.45.0.51
        rightprotoport=udp/l2tp
        auto=add

An officeVPN.secrets that looks like:

: PSK "StrongKey-Honest!"

An /etc/strongswan.conf that has the following line:

i_dont_care_about_security_and_use_aggressive_mode_psk=yes


Then the ipsec up officeVPN command is run:

# ipsec up officeVPN
Initiating Aggressive Mode IKE_SA officeVPN[1] to 50.54.0.51
Generating AGGRESSIVE request 0  [ SA KE No ID V V V V V ]
sending packet: from a.b.c.d [500] to 50.45.0.51[500] (320 bytes)
sending retransmit 1 of request message ID 0, seq 1
sending packet: from a.b.c.d [500] to 50.45.0.51[500] (320 bytes)
sending retransmit 2 of request message ID 0, seq 1
sending packet: from a.b.c.d [500] to 50.45.0.51[500] (320 bytes)
sending retransmit 3 of request message ID 0, seq 1
sending packet: from a.b.c.d [500] to 50.45.0.51[500] (320 bytes)
sending retransmit 4 of request message ID 0, seq 1
sending packet: from a.b.c.d [500] to 50.45.0.51[500] (320 bytes)
sending retransmit 5 of request message ID 0, seq 1
giving up after 5 retransmits
peer not responding, trying again (2/3)
Initiating Aggressive Mode IKE_SA officeVPN[1] to 50.54.0.51
Generating AGGRESSIVE request 0  [ SA KE No ID V V V V V ]
sending packet: from a.b.c.d [500] to 50.45.0.51[500] (320 bytes)
sending retransmit 1 of request message ID 0, seq 1
sending packet: from a.b.c.d [500] to 50.45.0.51[500] (320 bytes)
sending retransmit 2 of request message ID 0, seq 1
sending packet: from a.b.c.d [500] to 50.45.0.51[500] (320 bytes)
sending retransmit 3 of request message ID 0, seq 1
sending packet: from a.b.c.d [500] to 50.45.0.51[500] (320 bytes)
sending retransmit 4 of request message ID 0, seq 1
sending packet: from a.b.c.d [500] to 50.45.0.51[500] (320 bytes)
sending retransmit 5 of request message ID 0, seq 1
giving up after 5 retransmits
peer not responding, trying again (3/3)
Initiating Aggressive Mode IKE_SA officeVPN[1] to 50.54.0.51
Generating AGGRESSIVE request 0  [ SA KE No ID V V V V V ]
sending packet: from a.b.c.d [500] to 50.45.0.51[500] (320 bytes)
sending retransmit 1 of request message ID 0, seq 1
sending packet: from a.b.c.d [500] to 50.45.0.51[500] (320 bytes)
sending retransmit 2 of request message ID 0, seq 1
sending packet: from a.b.c.d [500] to 50.45.0.51[500] (320 bytes)
sending retransmit 3 of request message ID 0, seq 1
sending packet: from a.b.c.d [500] to 50.5.0.51[500] (320 bytes)
sending retransmit 4 of request message ID 0, seq 1
sending packet: from a.b.c.d [500] to 50.45.0.51[500] (320 bytes)
sending retransmit 5 of request message ID 0, seq 1
giving up after 5 retransmits
establishing IKE_SA failed, peer not responding
establishing connection 'officeVPN' failed.


>From the logs I get lines like:

Starting strongSwan 5.7.2 IPsec [starter]...
Starting IKE charon daemon (strongSwan 5.7.2, Linux 4.19.0-5-amd64, x86-64)
loading ca certificates from '/etc/ipsec.d/cacerts'
loading aa certificates from '/etc/ipsec.d/aacerts'
loading ocsp signer certificates from '/etc/ipsec.d/ocspcerts'
loading attribute certificates from '/etc/ipsec.d/acerts'
loading crls from '/etc/ipsec.d/crls'
loading secrets from '/etc/ipsec.d/officeVPN.sercrets'
    loading IKE secret for officeVPN 50.45.0.51
loaded plugins: charon aesni aes rc2 sha2 sha1 md5 mgf1 random nonce x509 revocation...
dropped capabilities, running as uid 0, gid 0
spawning 16 worker threads
charon (1499) started after 20 ms
received stroke: add connection 'officeVPN'
added configuration 'officeVPN'
received stroke: initiate 'officeVPN'


Where a.b.c.d is the local IP of the host and 50.54.0.51 is the VPN server.

Nothing that I have tried has had a positive effect.  Thank you for your patience.  I may be going about this wholly the wrong way, so any suggestions would be gratefully received.

Thank you.


--
Stephen Feyrer
DevOps Engineer
Greensill Capital
stephen.feyrer at greensill.com<mailto:stephen.feyrer at greensill.com>
http://www.greensill.com


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