go-alived

A lightweight, dependency-free VRRP (Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol) implementation in Go, designed as a simple alternative to keepalived.

Features

✅ Phase 1: Core VRRP Functionality (Completed)

• VRRP protocol implementation (RFC 3768/5798)
• Virtual IP management (add/remove VIPs)
• State machine (INIT/BACKUP/MASTER/FAULT)
• Priority-based master election
• Gratuitous ARP for network updates
• Raw socket VRRP packet send/receive
• Timer management (advertisement & master-down timers)
• VRRP instance manager with multi-instance support
• Configuration hot-reload (SIGHUP)

✅ Phase 2: Health Checking (Completed)

• Health checker interface with rise/fall logic
• TCP health checks
• HTTP/HTTPS health checks
• ICMP ping checks
• Script-based checks (custom commands)
• Periodic health check scheduling
• Health check integration with VRRP priority
• Track scripts: automatic priority adjustment on health changes

🚧 Phase 3: Enhanced Features (Planned)

• State transition scripts (notify_master/backup/fault)
• Email/Webhook notifications
• Sync groups
• Virtual MAC support
• Metrics export

Installation

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/loveuer/go-alived.git
cd go-alived
go build -o go-alived .

Quick Start

1. Test Your Environment

Before deployment, test if your environment supports VRRP:

# Basic test (auto-detect network interface)
sudo ./go-alived test

# Test specific interface
sudo ./go-alived test -i eth0

# Full test with VIP
sudo ./go-alived test -i eth0 -v 192.168.1.100/24

2. Run the Service

# Run with minimal config
sudo ./go-alived run -c config.mini.yaml -d

# Run with full config
sudo ./go-alived -c config.yaml

# Install as systemd service
sudo ./deployment/install.sh
sudo systemctl start go-alived

Usage

Commands

go-alived              # Run VRRP service (default)
go-alived run          # Run VRRP service
go-alived test         # Test environment for VRRP support
go-alived --help       # Show help
go-alived --version    # Show version

Global Flags

-c, --config string    Path to configuration file (default "/etc/go-alived/config.yaml")
-d, --debug            Enable debug mode
-h, --help             Show help
-v, --version          Show version

Test Command Flags

-i, --interface string    Network interface to test (auto-detect if not specified)
-v, --vip string          Test VIP address (e.g., 192.168.1.100/24)

See USAGE.md for detailed usage documentation.

Configuration

Minimal Configuration

# config.mini.yaml - VRRP only
global:
  router_id: "node1"

vrrp_instances:
  - name: "VI_1"
    interface: "eth0"
    state: "BACKUP"
    virtual_router_id: 51
    priority: 100
    advert_interval: 1
    auth_type: "PASS"
    auth_pass: "secret123"
    virtual_ips:
      - "192.168.1.100/24"

Full Configuration Example

See config.example.yaml for complete configuration with health checking.

Signals

• SIGHUP: Reload configuration
• SIGINT/SIGTERM: Graceful shutdown

Architecture

go-alived/
├── main.go                 # Application entry point
├── internal/
│   ├── cmd/               # Cobra commands
│   │   ├── root.go        # Root command
│   │   ├── run.go         # Run service command
│   │   └── test.go        # Environment test command
│   ├── vrrp/              # VRRP implementation
│   │   ├── packet.go      # VRRP packet structure & marshaling
│   │   ├── socket.go      # Raw socket operations
│   │   ├── state.go       # State machine & timers
│   │   ├── arp.go         # Gratuitous ARP
│   │   ├── instance.go    # VRRP instance logic
│   │   └── manager.go     # Instance manager
│   └── health/            # Health check system
│       ├── checker.go     # Checker interface & state
│       ├── monitor.go     # Health check scheduler
│       ├── tcp.go         # TCP health checker
│       ├── http.go        # HTTP/HTTPS health checker
│       ├── ping.go        # ICMP ping checker
│       ├── script.go      # Script checker
│       └── factory.go     # Checker factory
├── pkg/
│   ├── config/            # Configuration loading & validation
│   ├── logger/            # Logging system
│   └── netif/             # Network interface management
└── deployment/            # Deployment files
    ├── go-alived.service  # Systemd service file
    ├── install.sh         # Installation script
    ├── uninstall.sh       # Uninstallation script
    ├── check-env.sh       # Environment check script
    ├── README.md          # Deployment documentation
    └── COMPATIBILITY.md   # Environment compatibility guide

Environment Compatibility

✅ Fully Supported

• Physical servers
• KVM/QEMU virtual machines
• Proxmox VE
• VMware ESXi (with promiscuous mode)
• VirtualBox (with bridged network + promiscuous mode)

⚠️ Limited Support

• Private cloud (depends on network configuration)
• Docker containers (requires --privileged and --net=host)
• Kubernetes (requires hostNetwork mode)

❌ Not Supported

• AWS EC2 (multicast disabled)
• Aliyun ECS (multicast disabled)
• Azure VM (requires special configuration)
• Google Cloud (multicast disabled by default)

Why? Public clouds typically disable multicast protocols (224.0.0.18) at the network virtualization layer.

Alternative: Use cloud-native solutions like Elastic IP (AWS), SLB/HaVip (Aliyun), Load Balancer (Azure/GCP).

See deployment/COMPATIBILITY.md for detailed compatibility information.

Requirements

• Go 1.21+ (for building)
• Linux/macOS with root privileges (for raw sockets and interface management)
• Network interface with IPv4 address
• Multicast support (for VRRP)

Dependencies

Minimal external dependencies:

• github.com/vishvananda/netlink - Network interface management
• github.com/mdlayher/arp - ARP packet handling
• github.com/spf13/cobra - CLI framework
• golang.org/x/net/ipv4 - IPv4 raw socket support
• golang.org/x/net/icmp - ICMP ping support
• gopkg.in/yaml.v3 - YAML configuration parsing

Documentation

• USAGE.md - Detailed usage guide
• TESTING.md - Testing guide
• deployment/README.md - Deployment guide
• deployment/COMPATIBILITY.md - Environment compatibility
• roadmap.md - Implementation roadmap

Roadmap

See roadmap.md for detailed implementation plan.

License

MIT License

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit issues and pull requests.