bird/BGP: Error: Malformed AS_PATH: 5002001a02020000322b000033b50301

[Dr. Christian Riede]

Hello,

in the search for an alternative to quagga that hopefully has different
bugs ;-), i am currently evaluating bird.

Setup:

+--gw01--+ OpenSuSE/Quagga with uplink (not drawn here)
|        |
+--gw02--+ OpenSuSE/Quagga with uplink (not drawn here)
|        |
+--gw03--+ OpenBSD/openbgpd without Uplink
|        |
+--gw04--+ OpenSuSE/bird without Uplink

So we have 4 gateways, all connected redundantly via two ethernet networks.

All gateways are VMs on two different VMware ESX.

BGP is configured fully meshed.

The two Quaggas (gw01, gw02) are running stable.

The OpenBSD/openbgpd router (gw03) is running completely unstable
and dies after some time. This might be an VMWare issue. See
http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=124333601917681&w=2 and
http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-misc&m=124333936023226&w=2 - I have exactly
the same behaviour.

The bird-gateway (gw04) produces the following error messages while talking to the quaggas:

un 16 11:41:26 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp5: Error: Malformed AS_PATH: 5002001a02020000322b000033b50301
Jun 16 11:41:45 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp2: Error: Malformed AS_PATH: 5002001a02020000322b000033b50301
Jun 16 11:41:49 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp4: Error: Hold timer expired
Jun 16 11:41:54 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp5: Error: Malformed AS_PATH: 5002001a02020000322b000033b50301
Jun 16 11:42:15 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp1: Error: Malformed AS_PATH: 5002001a02020000322b000033b50301
Jun 16 11:42:21 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp4: Received error notification: Hold timer expired
Jun 16 11:42:32 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp5: Error: Malformed AS_PATH: 5002001a02020000322b000033b50301
Jun 16 11:42:46 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp5: Error: Malformed AS_PATH: 5002001a02020000322b000033b50301
Jun 16 11:42:50 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp1: Error: Hold timer expired
Jun 16 11:42:50 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp4: Received error notification: Hold timer expired
Jun 16 11:43:07 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp1: Error: Malformed AS_PATH: 5002001a02020000322b000033b50301
Jun 16 11:43:16 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp5: Error: Malformed AS_PATH: 5002001a02020000322b000033b50301
Jun 16 11:43:31 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp1: Error: Malformed AS_PATH: 5002001a02020000322b000033b50301
Jun 16 11:43:52 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp4: Error: Malformed AS_PATH: 5002001a02020000322b000033b50301
Jun 16 11:44:03 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp1: Error: Malformed AS_PATH: 5002001a02020000322b000033b50301
Jun 16 11:44:08 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp3: Error: Hold timer expired
Jun 16 11:44:17 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp2: Error: Malformed AS_PATH: 5002001a02020000322b000033b50301
Jun 16 11:44:22 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp4: Error: Hold timer expired
Jun 16 11:44:31 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp1: Error: Malformed AS_PATH: 5002001a02020000322b000033b50301
Jun 16 11:44:45 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp4: Error: Malformed AS_PATH: 5002001a02020000322b000033b50301
Jun 16 11:44:56 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp2: Error: Malformed AS_PATH: 5002001a02020000322b000033b50301
Jun 16 11:45:00 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp1: Received error notification: Hold timer expired
Jun 16 11:45:09 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp4: Error: Malformed AS_PATH: 5002001a02020000322b000033b50301
Jun 16 11:45:23 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp2: Error: Malformed AS_PATH: 5002001a02020000322b000033b50301
Jun 16 11:45:28 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp6: Error: Hold timer expired
Jun 16 11:45:28 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp1: Error: Hold timer expired
Jun 16 11:45:37 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp4: Error: Malformed AS_PATH: 5002001a02020000322b000033b50301
Jun 16 11:45:51 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp1: Error: Malformed AS_PATH: 5002001a02020000322b000033b50301
Jun 16 11:46:01 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp5: Error: Malformed AS_PATH: 5002001a02020000322b000033b50301
Jun 16 11:46:16 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp4: Error: Malformed AS_PATH: 5002001a02020000322b000033b50301
Jun 16 11:46:25 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp2: Error: Malformed AS_PATH: 5002001a02020000322b000033b50301
Jun 16 11:46:37 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp5: Error: Malformed AS_PATH: 5002001a02020000322b000033b50301
Jun 16 11:46:37 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp1: Received error notification: Hold timer expired
Jun 16 11:46:50 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp2: Error: Malformed AS_PATH: 5002001a02020000322b000033b50301
Jun 16 11:46:55 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp4: Error: Hold timer expired
Jun 16 11:47:06 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp5: Error: Malformed AS_PATH: 5002001a02020000322b000033b50301
Jun 16 11:47:10 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp1: Error: Hold timer expired
Jun 16 11:47:20 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp2: Error: Malformed AS_PATH: 5002001a02020000322b000033b50301
Jun 16 11:47:24 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp4: Error: Hold timer expired
Jun 16 11:47:34 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp5: Error: Malformed AS_PATH: 5002001a02020000322b000033b50301
Jun 16 11:47:38 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp1: Error: Hold timer expired
Jun 16 11:47:49 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp2: Error: Malformed AS_PATH: 5002001a02020000322b000033b50301
Jun 16 11:47:54 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp4: Error: Hold timer expired
Jun 16 11:48:05 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp5: Error: Malformed AS_PATH: 5002001a02020000322b000033b50301
Jun 16 11:48:09 cn-ka-gw04 bird: bgp1: Error: Malformed AS_PATH: 5002001a02020000322b000033b50301

With "watch netstat -tnp \| grep 179", I see the BGP sessions going up and down.

The Quaggas are logging:

Jun 16 09:29:23 cn-ka-gw02 bgpd[4092]: X.X.X.X [Error] bgp_read_packet error: Connection reset by peer
Jun 16 09:31:23 cn-ka-gw02 bgpd[4092]: X.X.X.X [Error] bgp_read_packet error: Connection reset by peer
Jun 16 09:33:23 cn-ka-gw02 bgpd[4092]: X.X.X.X [Error] bgp_read_packet error: Connection reset by peer
Jun 16 10:24:15 cn-ka-gw02 bgpd[4092]: X.X.X.X [Error] bgp_read_packet error: Connection reset by peer
Jun 16 10:29:32 cn-ka-gw02 bgpd[4092]: X.X.X.X [Error] bgp_read_packet error: Connection reset by peer
Jun 16 10:35:29 cn-ka-gw02 bgpd[4092]: X.X.X.X [Error] bgp_read_packet error: Connection reset by peer
Jun 16 10:41:18 cn-ka-gw02 bgpd[4092]: X.X.X.X [Error] bgp_read_packet error: Connection reset by peer
Jun 16 10:58:21 cn-ka-gw02 bgpd[4092]: X.X.X.X [Error] bgp_read_packet error: Connection reset by peer
Jun 16 11:02:48 cn-ka-gw02 bgpd[4092]: X.X.X.X [Error] bgp_read_packet error: Connection reset by peer
Jun 16 11:31:36 cn-ka-gw02 bgpd[4092]: X.X.X.X [Error] bgp_read_packet error: Connection reset by peer
Jun 16 11:43:21 cn-ka-gw02 bgpd[4092]: X.X.X.X [Error] bgp_read_packet error: Connection reset by pe

Any ideas whats going on here?

With kind regards,

Dr. Christian Riede
Teamleiter Technik 

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