Can't ping jail over vpn connection but can ping from local network

[danjb]

I'm running FreeNAS-9.10-STABLE-201606072003 on a machine with a single network card. FreeNAS has one jail on it for the Transmission plugin. I also have a separate machine running VirtualBox (single network card) and a set of virtual machines with bridged network addresses on the local network.

My private network is set up with static IP addresses for all servers on the 192.168.0.* network. I have a router running OpenVPN 2.3.10 so I can connect to the private network from the internet.

When I'm on the local network, everything is fine. I can ping and access all machines w/o a problem. When I'm VPN'ing in from the internet everything also works fine, EXCEPT for accessing the Transmission jail. It is unpingable, can't be reached by HTTP or SSH, etc. I can access the FreeNAS machine it is running on just fine. I can access all of the VirtualBox machines with bridged network addresses just fine. ONLY the Transmission jail is inaccessible.

I tried creating simple standard jail on the same FreeNAS machine alongside the Transmission jail and had a similar problem: The jail is unpingable over the VPN, but other machines are.

Can you think of anything that would differentiate a jail from a physical or VirtualBox virtual machine in terms of networking that would produce this kind of result?

 

[DrKK]

This could be any kind of routing/network issue. While you meditate on it, might I suggest, if you can get to the FreeNAS appliance via SSH, then by simply allowing "TCP Port Forwarding" in the Services->SSH->properties, you can get to your jails via http or whatever very easily---assuming your ssh client supports this kind of port forwarding (I recommend "Bitvise" on Windows).

 

[danjb]

Thank you for the SSH port forwarding idea! Between that or getting the console for the jail on the freenas web UI I can make things work. It is a curious situation though. It's strange if I run a continuous ping through the VPN the jail will be pingable once or twice during its boot, but is no longer pingable once it is up and running.