About Martian Packets

Overview

In the system message log, access_servers.log, messages such as the following may occasionally be seen:

 2006-01-17 00:00:00Kernel.Warning10.10.3.252Jan 16 23:58:30 127.0.0.1/127.0.0.1 kern.warning ll header: ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:00:02:a5:8b:1d:70:08:06 2006-01-17 00:00:11Kernel.Warning10.10.3.252Jan 16 23:58:41 127.0.0.1/127.0.0.1 kern.warning martian source 10.10.143.90 from 10.10.143.88, on dev eth0 2006-01-17 00:00:11Kernel.Warning10.10.3.252Jan 16 23:58:41 127.0.0.1/127.0.0.1 kern.warning ll header: ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:00:02:a5:da:c0:63:08:06 2006-01-17 00:00:31Kernel.Warning10.10.3.252Jan 16 23:59:01 127.0.0.1/127.0.0.1 kern.warning martian source 10.10.143.255 from 10.10.143.71, on dev eth0

More information

These errors come from the kernel of the Aventail appliance and indicate the presence of martian packets.  A martian packet is a packet with a source address that is not routable by the interface that received it.  Packets received on an interface that cannot route them could indicate an equipment malfunction or misconfiguration.

For more information, see this Wikipedia page:

• Martian Packets