Unifi USG-3P crash and burn

If you have been following my UniFi series, you will know that I have a UniFi Security Gateway 3P as my main firewall and router. It has been floorless, since I installed it, it worked like a dream. But today (18th Feb 2021). It had a hickup.

This morning, I USG had to re-provision to apply some minor changes in config and all hell broke loose.

What happened?

Upon re-provisioning I got a nice notification on my phone that said “Gateway commit error”, I thought “here we go”. Following this my internet and inter-vlan routing also dropped and because stupidly my cloud key is on different VLANs to my Wifi and home network. I could not access it. So what did I do now?

How did I overcome the problem?

I plugged in my Cisco console cable into the front of the USG and consoled in. I could get into the CLI fine, but remembered that I needed the SSH password that is on the cloud key.

I decided the best action would be to reset and re-adopt the USG. I plugged into the management VLAN and then ran the following command in the CLI of the USG (after the factory reset).

#: configure
#: set interfaces ethernet eth1 address 10.0.1.1/24
#: commit

This changed the IP of the default interface from 192.168.0.1/24 to 10.0.1.1/24. What it was before. Once this had been committed and changed. I could see the USG in my cloud key once more.

Re-adopting the USG restored 99.9{dd02ca53089cac2432c56b1281023466f904f5e47d54aa45d3c7a4cebb0a242f} of the settings as if nothing had happened. But the one thing I did notice is that my WAN was set to ethernet and not PPPoE. A quick change of this and a nail-biting re-provision. It was back up and running.

Conclusion

I have no idea what happened, but I think in conclusion, the concept of an external controller in the UniFi ecosystem, saved the day here and got me up and running quicker than any other router. However. I am glad that I had one port still on the management VLAN, so that I could still access the cloud key.

Networking, Tech, Ubiquiti

February 18, 2021