Files
tailscale/util
Mike O'Driscoll 48919f708b util/linuxfw: fix nftables endianness and add connmark conditional check (#19725)
Fix the following issues:

1. Endianness Bug: The nftables runner used hardcoded
   big-endian byte arrays for firewall mark values (0xff0000, etc.), breaking
   bitwise operations on little-endian systems (all x86/x64, ARM). This caused
   connmark save/restore rules to silently fail. Fixed by using
   binary.NativeEndian to generate correct byte order for the host system.

2. Connmark Restore Conditional Check: The connmark restore
   mechanism unconditionally overwrote packet marks, even when Tailscale
   hadn't set any mark bits in conntrack. This destroyed mark bits set by
   other systems (VPNs, policy routing, vendor flags), breaking coexistence.
   Fixed by adding a conditional check to only restore when (ct mark &
   0xff0000) != 0, preventing the worst case of wiping all marks to zero.

Changes:
- util/linuxfw/linuxfw.go: Added nativeEndianUint32() helper and updated
  all mask functions to use native byte order instead of hardcoded bytes
- util/linuxfw/nftables_runner.go: Added conditional check in
  makeConnmarkRestoreExprs() to only restore when ct mark has Tailscale
  bits set; added detailed comment about bit preservation limitations
- util/linuxfw/iptables_runner.go: Added conditional check using -m
  connmark ! --mark to match nftables behavior
- Tests updated: Fixed byte-level regression tests to expect little-endian
  byte sequences and verify the new conditional check

Note: Perfect bit preservation in nftables remains challenging
due to nftables expression VM limitations. The current implementation
prevents the critical case of wiping marks with zero.

Updates #3310
Fixes #11803
Related to #8555

Signed-off-by: Mike O'Driscoll <mikeo@tailscale.com>
2026-05-14 09:11:24 -04:00
..