[EDIT & FIX] Making IPv6 work again [Debian bug #657109]

[ketoth]

EDIT: it became quite obvious to me that my problem is about the same as described in Debian bugreport #657109

Hi,

Wireless driver zd1211rw, running LMDE UP4 (MATE interface). And yes, IPv6-capable ISP and IPv6 enabled in router.
Previously, it worked fine. But since I formatted and installed new from the 201204 RC ISO, there's trouble

Network-Manager:
Available for all users
IPv4: DHCP; IPv4 required;
IPv6: manual; 2a01:e35:XXX:d6a0::20; 64; 2a01:e35:XXX:d6a0::

All right, maybe I miss something...

$host ipv6.proof.ovh.net
ipv6.proof.ovh.net has IPv6 address 2001:41d0:2:876a::1
$ping6 2001:41d0:2:876a::1
connect: Network is unreachable

And test-ipv6.com only reports "No IPv6 address detected" (no test related to IPv6 passes, even the one without DNS)
And yes, IPv6 is enabled in ufw and in the Firefox config too.

Setting Network-Manager method to "ignore" makes it give the MAC-related IPv6 for a few seconds (doesn't work anyway), and "automatic" makes constantly the network trying to connect without success. According to my backups, network-manager has to be like stated above. I think I definitively miss something... What kind of checks can be done ?

[ketoth]

Omg such a mess
Setting IPv6 to "local link", I saw after reboot that network-manager shows... a public IPv6 (generated from MAC) together with a local IPv6 as gateway (confused ?!). And, of course... IPv6 connectivity works.
Now, we can do it right !

type: manual
Address: (a less complicated stuff, basically the prefix and "::2" at the end)
Prefix: 64
Gateway (the prefix, finishing with ::)
IPv6 required: yes

Now, let's just do this:

Code: Select all

sudo service network-manager restart

Et voilà ! Network-manager starts up, connects to the wireless station, gets the IPv4 from DHCP and just uses the IPv6 in it's config file. Success !


Everything back to normal, now I'm perfectly happy about Mint Debian UP4
Still:

"ignore": no IPv6
"automatic": network-manager fails connecting
"manual" doesn't take into account immediately (only after service restart)
"local only": MAC-based IPv6 globally active <-- something fishy here

[ketoth]

Follow-up: well, I don't know what I did yesterday to make it work.. pushing the IPv6 address to ifconfig ? Anyway, that doesn't work again and I lost more than a hour trying anything I did before..
Looking in the changelogs between actual version and wheezy's latest brings me to these 2 bugs:

#653076 related to failing network activation when IPv6 set to auto (network-manager doesn't give it time to get the IPv6, the lag being treated as connection RST):
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=653076

#657109 related to IPv6 default route failing when IPv6 set manually (that's probably my actual issue, external IPv6 network being unreachable):
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=657109

/var/log/syslog shows the exact same error as described in the bugreport:

Apr 24 09:59:50 pc1 NetworkManager[8247]: <warn> Failed to add route Missing attribute
Apr 24 09:59:50 pc1 NetworkManager[8247]: <error> [1335254390.73482] [nm-system.c:1061] nm_system_replace_default_ip6_route(): (wlan0): failed to set IPv6 default route: -1

But network-manager 0.9.4.0-1 (which corrects these bugs) has a quite heavy dependency tree, so manual package install is right out. Only thing I can do is reporting this so it gets corrected before the final ISO

[ketoth]

For those who can't wait (like me), you can try this:
Warning: if you're not tech savvy and comfortable with Debian, just don't do this. Very easy to break the system.

Comment-out the lines for LMDE from your /etc/apt/sources.list. Add the lines of Debian wheezy.
sudo apt-get update
sudo synaptic (recommended)
search for "network-manager-gnome", right-click: upgrade. It will together with some libs, as of today this won't hurt.
once installed, uncomment the LMDE lines, and reboot pc.

As of today (network-manager 0.9.4.1-1): IPv6 routing works, test-ipv6.com all green. But, little bug: signal strength is constantly at 100% (normally it's around 25%). But if you have a stable wireless and don't wander around, you won't bother about this constant "100%". At least you can full IPv6