[PATCH net 6/6] ovpn: use monotonic clock for peer keepalive timeouts
From: Antonio Quartulli <antonio@openvpn.net>
Date: 2026-07-20 14:41:51
Subsystem:
networking drivers, openvpn data channel offload, the rest · Maintainers:
Andrew Lunn, "David S. Miller", Eric Dumazet, Jakub Kicinski, Paolo Abeni, Antonio Quartulli, Linus Torvalds
From: Marco Baffo <redacted>
Replace ktime_get_real_seconds() with the monotonic
ktime_get_boottime_seconds() to ensure the keepalive mechanism is robust
against system clock modifications.
Right now, the driver uses ktime_get_real_seconds() to track peer
timeouts, relying on the system wall-clock.
An administrative time adjustment or an NTP sync that steps the clock
forward can cause `now' to instantly exceed `last_recv + timeout'.
When this occurs, the driver artificially expires healthy peers.
Depending on the OpenVPN user-space configuration, this triggers a
premature tunnel restart (if --keepalive or --ping-restart is used) or
a complete disconnection of the client (if --ping-exit is used).
Fixes: 3ecfd9349f40 ("ovpn: implement keepalive mechanism")
Signed-off-by: Marco Baffo <redacted>
Signed-off-by: Antonio Quartulli <antonio@openvpn.net>
---
drivers/net/ovpn/io.c | 4 ++--
drivers/net/ovpn/peer.c | 4 ++--
2 files changed, 4 insertions(+), 4 deletions(-)
diff --git a/drivers/net/ovpn/io.c b/drivers/net/ovpn/io.c
index a6b777a9c2d9..9a66d693039a 100644
--- a/drivers/net/ovpn/io.c
+++ b/drivers/net/ovpn/io.c@@ -142,7 +142,7 @@ void ovpn_decrypt_post(void *data, int ret) } /* keep track of last received authenticated packet for keepalive */ - WRITE_ONCE(peer->last_recv, ktime_get_real_seconds()); + WRITE_ONCE(peer->last_recv, ktime_get_boottime_seconds()); rcu_read_lock(); sock = rcu_dereference(peer->sock);
@@ -294,7 +294,7 @@ void ovpn_encrypt_post(void *data, int ret) ovpn_peer_stats_increment_tx(&peer->link_stats, orig_len); /* keep track of last sent packet for keepalive */ - WRITE_ONCE(peer->last_sent, ktime_get_real_seconds()); + WRITE_ONCE(peer->last_sent, ktime_get_boottime_seconds()); /* skb passed down the stack - don't free it */ skb = NULL; err_unlock:
diff --git a/drivers/net/ovpn/peer.c b/drivers/net/ovpn/peer.c
index 8fdbb5050690..a21d02ac715e 100644
--- a/drivers/net/ovpn/peer.c
+++ b/drivers/net/ovpn/peer.c@@ -45,7 +45,7 @@ static void unlock_ovpn(struct ovpn_priv *ovpn, */ void ovpn_peer_keepalive_set(struct ovpn_peer *peer, u32 interval, u32 timeout) { - time64_t now = ktime_get_real_seconds(); + time64_t now = ktime_get_boottime_seconds(); netdev_dbg(peer->ovpn->dev, "scheduling keepalive for peer %u: interval=%u timeout=%u\n",
@@ -1359,7 +1359,7 @@ void ovpn_peer_keepalive_work(struct work_struct *work) { struct ovpn_priv *ovpn = container_of(work, struct ovpn_priv, keepalive_work.work); - time64_t next_run = 0, now = ktime_get_real_seconds(); + time64_t next_run = 0, now = ktime_get_boottime_seconds(); LLIST_HEAD(release_list); spin_lock_bh(&ovpn->lock);
--
2.54.0