"Service unavailable in your location": problem with IPv6

[Stayen]

I have a rather strange issue with running GCP development from a Netherlands-based VPS.

The VPS is run under Ubuntu 22.04, with both IPv4 and IPv6 enabled (I need both stacks for proper development).

Whereas all the GCP-related CLI commands (using gcloud, gsutil etc) are working just fine with IPv6 disabled, some of them, when IPv6 is enabled, report that "That service is unavailable from your location".

So basically, the question is - what the heck is going on? GCP can't accept IPv6 based connections from exactly the same VPS, considering them in some improper location?

I can't even report that from GCP itself, since its Basic support level is basically useless in such cases.

I would appreciate any possible pieces of advice on how to handle that ("just order a VPS somewhere else" is not an acceptable solution, since there's no guarantee that exactly the same problem won't strike again).

Thanks.

[Marvin_Lucero]

Hi @Stayen ,

You question lacks several important details that will help us isolate what causes the error/warning message "That service is unavailable from your location" when enabling IPv6. You should have added any documentations that you're following prior to this setup, mention if it was an initial setup or it was already working before, or gave walkthrough how were you testing the IPv6 connectivity between the VPS.

You mentioned that :

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@Stayen wrote:

GCP can't accept IPv6 based connections from exactly the same VPS

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You should have added screenshots or logs showing GCP is not accepting IPv6 traffic on the same VPS.

These are the areas you can check to troubleshoot the IPv6 issue:
a. Make sure that the service or application you are trying to access actually supports IPv6. Not all services have full IPv6 compatibility.
b. Verify that your VPC network in GCP is configured to support IPv6. Make sure that you have created the necessary subnets and routes for IPv6 traffic.
c. Examine GCP logs for any error messages related to IPv6 connectivity. The Logging section in the Google Cloud Console can provide information about network-related events and errors.

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@Stayen wrote:

I can't even report that from GCP itself, since its Basic support level is basically useless in such cases.

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It will be worth it to report this to GCP support by creating a support case and since it requires further checking on your project, account and configuration that will pinpoint why you are unable to use IPv6 based connections on your VPS.

[Stayen]

In the part that is related to gcloud issues the setup is pretty standard:

sudo apt install -y apt-transport-https ca-certificates gnupg
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/cloud.google.gpg] https://packages.cloud.google.com/apt cloud-sdk main" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-cloud-sdk.list
curl https://packages.cloud.google.com/apt/doc/apt-key.gpg | sudo apt-key --keyring /usr/share/keyrings/cloud.google.gpg add -
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install google-cloud-sdk

The setup has been initially done approx. 2 years ago, on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, and "apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade" is run periodically to keep the environment up-to-date.

The issue began approx.  6 months ago. There were no changes in IPv4/Ipv6 addresses, no software possibly interfering with connectivity (proxy, vpn etc) was ever in use, GCP just began to deny access to some resources when using gcloud CLI.

When I temporary disable IPv6, i.e. by adding

net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6=1
net.ipv6.conf.default.disable_ipv6=1
net.ipv6.conf.lo.disable_ipv6=1
net.ipv6.conf.enp3s0.disable_ipv6=1

to /etc/sysctl.conf and run "sysctl -p", the issue is gone, but XRDP stops working (its default build requires IPv6). and I also have other pieces of software that require IPv6 connectivity.

So the question is, why gcloud interprets Netherlands IPv4 as good to access resources, but IPv6 from the exactly same location as forbidden to use.