Thank you for the link to the ar71xx builds. I either didn't know of, or had forgotten about their existence. I will do some testing.
I do want to move to the ath79 builds: I did think of creating an image I could copy across from USB so I could send out USB sticks and flash a new image. Asking people to plug in a USB stick is OK, asking them to log in and configure stuff isn't. (In actual fact, getting local people to buy a USB stick and plug in, so I can download the image is workable too, so I don't even have to send USB sticks by post.)
Hiring technical people is cost-prohibitive. I can do upgrades incidental to scheduled trips for other purposes. I suspect when the time comes for hardware replacement, I will look for hardware that allows two images on two partitions, so fallback to a previously working image is easy.
Ah, good point about the USB stick approach! I should have thought of that. That definitely makes more sense than either of the two contingency plans I gave.
I'm getting these messages, running dnsmasq - 2.83-1, r15553, on a RPi4:
daemon.err dnsmasq[564]: failed to send packet: Network unreachable
daemon.err dnsmasq[3700]: failed to send packet: Address family not supported by protocol
But overnight, I shut off my Win10 desktop, and no more errors in the system log, until I turned it back on. My Android and Debian devices remained on overnight. Hmm.....
Thanks for clarifying, but given the severity of this issue, I hope that is revisited to allow the package system to be used to update dnsmasq to a safer version.
Also, I will also note huge amounts of log spam daemon.err dnsmasq[4204]: failed to send packet: Network unreachable
Using a 19.07.4 - based build, I used the opkg update method, and am now running dnsmasq - 2.80-16.2
I'm also getting these errors (at least hourly) since the dnsmasq upgrade to v2.80-16.2 last night, running stock 19.07.5 r11257 on Linksys WRT3200ACM:
dnsmasq Ignoring query from non-local network
dnsmasq failed to send packet: Network unreachable
dnsmasq failed to send packet: Address family not supported by protocol
Any advice much appreciated, unless we wait for a patch if this has been acknowledged as a bug and being actively worked on.
Like many, I spend most of my working life on video calls these days, and today my audio and video feeds have been choppy, roughly at the time of the errors. I have SQM running layer cake which is normally rock solid regardless of network traffic.... Not since the upgrade .
So for me anyway these are definitely legit errors which I need to fix somehow.
Update: After watching dnsmasq with verbose output for a little while, I had the slight suspicion that the error was IPv6 related. And indeed, after I set the WAN interface to ipv6=0 the failed to send packet: Network unreachable errors have stopped.
Wed Jan 20 17:13:14 2021 daemon.err dnsmasq[2447]: failed to send packet: Address family not supported by protocol
Wed Jan 20 17:13:20 2021 daemon.err dnsmasq[2447]: failed to send packet: Address family not supported by protocol
Wed Jan 20 17:13:53 2021 daemon.err dnsmasq[2447]: failed to send packet: Address family not supported by protocol
Wed Jan 20 17:15:32 2021 daemon.err dnsmasq[2447]: failed to send packet: Network unreachable
Wed Jan 20 17:17:04 2021 daemon.err dnsmasq[2447]: failed to send packet: Network unreachable
Wed Jan 20 17:18:25 2021 daemon.err dnsmasq[2447]: failed to send packet: Network unreachable
Wed Jan 20 17:21:03 2021 daemon.err dnsmasq[2447]: failed to send packet: Network unreachable
Getting the same errors in bursts on a test device:
Wed Jan 20 12:29:22 2021 daemon.err dnsmasq[1]: failed to send packet: Address family not supported by protocol
Wed Jan 20 12:29:22 2021 daemon.err dnsmasq[1]: failed to send packet: Address family not supported by protocol
Wed Jan 20 12:29:24 2021 daemon.err dnsmasq[1]: failed to send packet: Address family not supported by protocol
Wed Jan 20 12:29:25 2021 daemon.err dnsmasq[1]: failed to send packet: Address family not supported by protocol
Wed Jan 20 12:38:09 2021 daemon.err dnsmasq[1]: failed to send packet: Address family not supported by protocol
Wed Jan 20 12:38:09 2021 daemon.err dnsmasq[1]: failed to send packet: Address family not supported by protocol
Wed Jan 20 12:38:09 2021 daemon.err dnsmasq[1]: failed to send packet: Address family not supported by protocol
Wed Jan 20 12:38:09 2021 daemon.err dnsmasq[1]: failed to send packet: Address family not supported by protocol
Wed Jan 20 12:38:09 2021 daemon.err dnsmasq[1]: failed to send packet: Address family not supported by protocol
Wed Jan 20 12:38:09 2021 daemon.err dnsmasq[1]: failed to send packet: Address family not supported by protocol
Sorry for editing this post so much, but I was wrong. It is definitely related to IPv6, but it has nothing to do with IPv6 on the WAN interface.
Turns out, it has been a client machine all along. I started out with disabling IPv6, everywhere, including my clients, then re-enabling it on all interfaces. After I finally enabled it on LAN, it led me to believe it was IPv6 on WAN, but it wasn't. I forgot my Windows 10 client.
After again turning on IPv6 on the Windows 10 machine, the "Network unreachable" errors are now back. I don't have any other machines with a different OS in my network (at least none that request IPv6 dhcp) to check if it is Windows specific or also happening with other OSes. But that's the culprit. Somehow dnsmasq is stepping on its own operation now, and going "ouch" a lot. Benign, but very noisy.
Exactly in the same boat here, the only device with Window 10 connecting to OpenWrt gives me the errors again this morning, switched it off last night they disappeared!
Switched off IPv6 on the W10 PC:
removed the daemon.err dnsmasq[2861]: failed to send packet: Address family not supported by protocol errors
with only seldom no other daemon.err dnsmasq[2861]: failed to send packet: Network unreachable errors displayed
I hear you, and I really don't want to downplay anything. But this is dnsmasq we are talking about, it is responsible for DHCP and DNS requests, and the errors seem to be related to the latter.
I will happily stand corrected, but I don't see how an error thrown by dnsmasq can possibly influence other aspects of routing or SQM, those don't run through dnsmasq, you don't even need dnsmasq for regular router operation.
It just occurred to me that besides DHCPv4 and DNS operation, dnsmasq is also responsible for RA. My lack of experience with IPv6 is really start to show now, so I don't want to speculate any further.
I solved my problems by disabling IPv6 on the "offending" client, and my IPv6 being strictly local it's not something I terribly miss at the moment. But there is something off with dnsmasq and IPv6 and it doesn't seem to be a fringe problem.
I really hope a dev can chime in on the issue soon.
I located the problem to my wife's Windows work computer. It is in an external windows domain and we have no administrator rights to it. There seems to be some incompatibility with this new dnsmasq fix.