New system not able to unlock after running role

[aheath1992]

New system is unable to unlock after running the nbde_client role, after running the role get an all good from Ansible but upon reboot the system stops at the Luks encryption screen.

    - name: Import nbde_client role
      ansible.builtin.import_role:
        name: linux-system-roles.nbde_client
      vars:
        nbde_client_bindings:
          - device: "{{ root_disk | d('/dev/vda2') }}"
            encryption_password: "{{ current_password }}"
            servers: "{{ tang_servers }}"

[richm]

What version of the role are you using?
What version of ansible are you using?
What is the platform/version of your control node?
What is the platform/version of your managed node?
@sergio-correia what other debugging information do we need?

[aheath1992]

What version of the role are you using - 1.71.1
What version of ansible are you using - 2.16
What is the platform/version of your control node - fedora 39
What is the platform/version of your managed node - RHEL 8.8

[sergio-correia]

Hello. Here are some more info that may be helpful to debug this:

• what is the version of clevis in the managed node?
• what are all the encrypted devices in the managed node? is it that /dev/vda2 or do we have others?
• please check whether the initrd from the managed node includes the clevis machinery to perform the unlocking in early boot (if that is the case); something like lsinitrd | grep clevis can help here
• also, check whether network is enabled for early boot, which it will need in order to access the tang servers; the role includes "rd.neednet=1" to indicate this. It will likely be included in the initrd in a file named etc/cmdline.d/01-default.conf. Perhaps something like this could help to verify this: lsinitrd /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img etc/cmdline.d/01-default.conf
• if you have access to the tang server, also please check whether there are any requests coming from the client (clevis)
• check also whether clevis-luks-askpass.path unit is enabled: systemctl status clevis-luks-askpass.path; it will be used if we are going to decrypt a disk in late boot phase
• check also the clevis configuration for the specified device; e.g.: clevis luks list -d /dev/vda2

@richm: I wonder if it makes sense to have some "action"/"state" to collect some of these information from the managed hosts, to help troubleshooting such issues?

[aheath1992]

• what is the version of clevis in the managed node? - clevis-15-15.el8.x86_64
• what are all the encrypted devices in the managed node? is it that /dev/vda2 or do we have others? - just the root device in this case /dev/vda2
• please check whether the initrd from the managed node includes the clevis machinery to perform the unlocking in early boot (if that is the case); something like lsinitrd | grep clevis can help here

lsinitrd | grep clevis
clevis
clevis-pin-null
clevis-pin-sss
clevis-pin-tang
clevis-pin-tpm2
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     root           48 Jan 20  2023 etc/systemd/system/cryptsetup.target.wants/clevis-luks-askpass.path -> /usr/lib/systemd/system/clevis-luks-askpass.path
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root     root         1679 Jan 20  2023 usr/bin/clevis
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root     root         1654 Oct 28  2020 usr/bin/clevis-decrypt
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root     root         1148 Jan 20  2023 usr/bin/clevis-decrypt-null
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root     root        25296 Jan 20  2023 usr/bin/clevis-decrypt-sss
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root     root         3560 Jan 20  2023 usr/bin/clevis-decrypt-tang
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root     root         5121 Oct 28  2020 usr/bin/clevis-decrypt-tpm2
-rw-r--r--   1 root     root        32885 Jan 20  2023 usr/bin/clevis-luks-common-functions
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root     root         2115 Oct 28  2020 usr/bin/clevis-luks-list
-rwxr-xr-x   1 root     root         2466 Jan 20  2023 usr/libexec/clevis-luks-askpass
-rw-r--r--   1 root     root          302 Oct 28  2020 usr/lib/systemd/system/clevis-luks-askpass.path
-rw-r--r--   1 root     root          190 Jan 20  2023 usr/lib/systemd/system/clevis-luks-askpass.service

lsinitrd /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img etc/cmdline.d/01-default.conf
 rd.neednet=1 

systemctl status clevis-luks-askpass.path
● clevis-luks-askpass.path - Forward Password Requests to Clevis Directory Watch
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/clevis-luks-askpass.path; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (waiting) since Fri 2024-02-02 13:54:24 UTC; 24s ago
     Docs: man:clevis-luks-unlockers(7)

clevis luks list -d /dev/vda2
1: sss '{"t":1,"pins":{"tang":[{"url":"http://tang1"},{"url":"http://tang2"}]}}'

[sergio-correia]

At a first glance, it looks OK -- could you also check `journalctl , to see if any useful information shows up, please? (I forgot to mention beforehand, but feel free to redact any IP addresses, if required)

journalctl -xf -u clevis-luks-askpass.service

[aheath1992]

Feb 02 15:21:20 clevis-test.ansi-001.prod.iad2.dc.redhat.com clevis-luks-askpass[11941]: Error communicating with the server http://tang1
Feb 02 15:21:20 clevis-test.ansi-001.prod.iad2.dc.redhat.com clevis-luks-askpass[11942]: Error communicating with the server http://tang2

telnet tang1 80
Trying tang1...
Connected to tang1.
Escape character is '^]'.

telnet tang2 80
Trying tang2...
Connected to tang2.
Escape character is '^]'.

[richm]

@sergio-correia any idea?

[xeluior]

I've been seeing this as well. I have found that adding the _netdev option to the relevant fstab entry allows the unlocking to proceed (tested on Rocky 8 and 9 clients, both early and late boot, and Debian 11 and 12 clients, late boot only). I have added an awk script task into my playbook after the role runs to add this option.

- name: Update fstab options
  ansible.builtin.shell: |
    name="$(awk '$2 == "{{ item.device }}" { print $1 }' /etc/crypttab | head -n 1)"
    awk -v mapper_path="/dev/mapper/$name" '{
      if ($1 == mapper_path && index($4, "_netdev") == 0) {
        $4 = $4 ",_netdev"
      }
      print
    }' /etc/fstab > /tmp/fstab
    diff -q /tmp/fstab /etc/fstab || echo changed
    mv /tmp/fstab /etc/fstab
  loop: '{{ nbde_client_bindings }}'
  register: fstab
  changed_when: '"changed" in fstab.stdout'

I believe this behavior is tied to systemd's ordering of mount units, that is, it orders fstab entries with _netdev after network.online which is necessary for clevis to work. (ref)

[sergio-correia]

I've been seeing this as well. I have found that adding the _netdev option to the relevant fstab entry allows the unlocking to proceed (tested on Rocky 8 and 9 clients, both early and late boot, and Debian 11 and 12 clients, late boot only). I have added an awk script task into my playbook after the role runs to add this option.

- name: Update fstab options
  ansible.builtin.shell: |
    name="$(awk '$2 == "{{ item.device }}" { print $1 }' /etc/crypttab | head -n 1)"
    awk -v mapper_path="/dev/mapper/$name" '{
      if ($1 == mapper_path && index($4, "_netdev") == 0) {
        $4 = $4 ",_netdev"
      }
      print
    }' /etc/fstab > /tmp/fstab
    diff -q /tmp/fstab /etc/fstab || echo changed
    mv /tmp/fstab /etc/fstab
  loop: '{{ nbde_client_bindings }}'
  register: fstab
  changed_when: '"changed" in fstab.stdout'

I believe this behavior is tied to systemd's ordering of mount units, that is, it orders fstab entries with _netdev after network.online which is necessary for clevis to work. (ref)

Yeah, this is likely in the right direction.

We may need to have _netdev in crypttab, to mark the device as requiring network, and to prevent a dependency loop, we also need to add _netdev to fstab as well, if the device is specified there for a mount point. Additionally, we may also have to enable the remote-cryptsetup.target unit.

[xeluior]

I have some more information that should probably be considered here from doing some testing with this role. I did have to add the _netdev option in both /etc/fstab and /etc/crypttab for automatic unlock. This works fine, however, on SystemD versions < 245, the crypttab generator creates a weird ordering issue with the dev-mapper-{name}.device unit that will hang shutdown indefinitely. This can be fixed by adding the x-systemd.requires=systemd-cryptsetup@{name}.service option to the appropriate device in /etc/fstab as well. I have an Ansible-native solution in the playbook I used to deploy this which I could turn into a PR, but it requires several new options per device in nbde_client_bindings so that it can create the appropriate crypttab and fstab entries.

EDIT: the SystemD issue mentioned systemd/systemd#8472