GRE Tunnel stuck in 'pending: true' (Device not present) on OpenWrt 24.10.5

Installing and Using OpenWrt Network and Wireless Configuration
1

Hello everyone,

I am trying to set up a standard Site-to-Site GRE tunnel between two identical routers bridging two LANs. The routers are running a custom build of OpenWrt 24.10.5.

No matter how I configure the tunnel via LuCI or /etc/config/network, the custom GRE interface never comes UP. LuCI throws a "Network device is not present" error or something like that, but the point is: I can't ping and the interfaces are neither showing in ifconfig nor ip a.

Note: Yes, I have kmod-gre installed.

Disclaimer: I have rebuilt this setup and changed the IP addresses multiple times during troubleshooting. The IPs provided below are just to give context and illustrate the logic of the topology.

Here is my topology:

Router 1 (Site A):

  • Physical Transport IP (eth1): 10.0.0.31
  • LAN Subnet: 192.168.102.0/24
  • Desired GRE Tunnel IP: 192.168.40.1

Router 2 (Site B):

  • Physical Transport IP (eth1): 10.0.0.32
  • LAN Subnet: 192.168.101.0/24
  • Desired GRE Tunnel IP: 192.168.40.3

Note: The routers can successfully ping each other via their transport IPs (10.0.0.31 <-> 10.0.0.32).

The Configuration (Router 1)

Here is my /etc/config/network snippet.

config interface 'gre_tunnel001'
option proto 'gre'
option peeraddr '10.0.0.32'
option ipaddr '10.0.0.31'

config interface 'gre_static001'
option proto 'static'
option device '@gre_tunnel001'
option ipaddr '192.168.40.1'
option netmask '255.255.255.252'

config route
option interface 'gre_static001'
option target '192.168.101.0/24'
option gateway '192.168.40.3'`

The Symptoms / Logs

  • ifconfig or ip a does not show any custom GRE interface created (only the default dummy gre0).
  • Checking the status with ifstatus gre_tunnel001 returns:

JSON{ "up": false, "pending": true, "available": true, "autostart": true, "dynamic": false, "proto": "gre", "data": {} }

Any guidance is greatly appreciated!