Strongswan 5 issues in IPFire 2.13

Strongswan 5 issues in IPFire 2.13

[Michael Tremer]

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Hey,

when IPFire 2.13 was released, the latest version of strongswan was
shipped with it. Apparently, some people have problems operating their
VPN connections with it.

This is a brief summary from my point of view:

The first version with these changes that might cause trouble has been
released in August 2012 with a big headline which said: Testers needed.

 * http://planet.ipfire.org/post/testers-needed-strongswan-5-0-0
 * http://lists.ipfire.org/pipermail/development/2012-August/000039.html

My mail on the mailing list states:
> It should not require any manual interaction at all. Please install
> and give me feedback about the connection stability and the
> interoperability with other (proprietary) implementations.

It's as if someone had known...

If you think, we didn't have people who actually tested this, you are
wrong. There were a lot of people and the reports I got of them were all
like: "Yeah, this made my VPN tunnels more stable".
Especially when the configuration of one connection has been edited, the
other connections remained established all the time. A big advantage
over the implementation in IPFire 2.11!

Eight days before the final version of IPFire 2.13 was released, people
started complaining. It was not a real bug report, but just a shout out
"something went wrong, I could not be bothered, so I downgraded!". No
technical details, no logs, no what-so-ever.

Since the release, a bunch of more people complained about similar
problems. Again, no one provided (or was willing to provide) information
that helps to solve the problem. Nobody was even bothered to create a
proper bug report in bugzilla.

My VPN connections run for more than six months with strongswan 5 and I
never had any problems since then.

If someone really has interest in solving this, maybe it is time that
you start the action and help the developers. This is not a project
where you can tell people what they should do (for you). This is an Open
Source project - so everyone is able to read the source code, check what
changes have been made and to provide a fix.

-Michael

Aw: Strongswan 5 issues in IPFire 2.13

[Bernhard Bitsch]

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Hi Michael,

you are right in your complaints. But on the other hand, why can not these users without problems with Strongswan 5, help these with issues?
As I see it, there are ways to do VPN wrong and ways to do it right.
And we should provide as community hints for the right ways.

-Bernhard

> Gesendet: Donnerstag, 07. März 2013 um 13:21 Uhr
> Von: "Michael Tremer" <michael.tremer(a)ipfire.org>
> An: development(a)lists.ipfire.org
> Betreff: Strongswan 5 issues in IPFire 2.13
>
> Hey,
>
> when IPFire 2.13 was released, the latest version of strongswan was
> shipped with it. Apparently, some people have problems operating their
> VPN connections with it.
>
> This is a brief summary from my point of view:
>
> The first version with these changes that might cause trouble has been
> released in August 2012 with a big headline which said: Testers needed.
>
>  * http://planet.ipfire.org/post/testers-needed-strongswan-5-0-0
>  * http://lists.ipfire.org/pipermail/development/2012-August/000039.html
>
> My mail on the mailing list states:
> > It should not require any manual interaction at all. Please install
> > and give me feedback about the connection stability and the
> > interoperability with other (proprietary) implementations.
>
> It's as if someone had known...
>
> If you think, we didn't have people who actually tested this, you are
> wrong. There were a lot of people and the reports I got of them were all
> like: "Yeah, this made my VPN tunnels more stable".
> Especially when the configuration of one connection has been edited, the
> other connections remained established all the time. A big advantage
> over the implementation in IPFire 2.11!
>
> Eight days before the final version of IPFire 2.13 was released, people
> started complaining. It was not a real bug report, but just a shout out
> "something went wrong, I could not be bothered, so I downgraded!". No
> technical details, no logs, no what-so-ever.
>
> Since the release, a bunch of more people complained about similar
> problems. Again, no one provided (or was willing to provide) information
> that helps to solve the problem. Nobody was even bothered to create a
> proper bug report in bugzilla.
>
> My VPN connections run for more than six months with strongswan 5 and I
> never had any problems since then.
>
> If someone really has interest in solving this, maybe it is time that
> you start the action and help the developers. This is not a project
> where you can tell people what they should do (for you). This is an Open
> Source project - so everyone is able to read the source code, check what
> changes have been made and to provide a fix.
>
> -Michael
>
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