pfSense

Tested on

2.7.0-RELEASE (amd64)
built on Wed Jun 28 03:53:34 UTC 2023
FreeBSD 14.0-CURRENT

We are having a similar issue which seems to come from the same bug. When an alias table contains accented characters it fails on HA Sync on the secondary box

pfSense is restoring the configuration /cf/conf/backup/config-1690796809.xml

Upon inspection of both configuration files (primary and secondary box) we see that CTAGS have been updated and contain the accented Character in the form of "Á" in the case of an accented Á

So: no CTAGS removing, but constant errors of restoring configuration.

Upon further testing we found the following:

Accented characters (or an apostrophe for that matter too) present in aliases or any description field (we have seen it happen in routes and rules) can trigger the error.

php-fpm[36445]: /xmlrpc.php: Configuration Change: (system)@10.64.255.1: Merged in config (staticroutes, gateways, virtualip, system, hasync, aliases, ca, cert, crl, dhcpd, dnsmasq, filter, ipsec, nat, openvpn, schedules, unbound sections) from XMLRPC client.
php-fpm[36445]: /xmlrpc.php: XML error: Undeclared entity error at line 249 in /conf/config.xml

We have tested by creating special characters in descriptions on aliases. It does not always error like the above, but it does sync the configuration. Sometimes the secondary configuration problem field does not get updated.

In this particular error, we added an accented character to an alias, and the error came from a route description with an accented character. However, we had made multiple configuration changes with accented and non accented characters before and the error did not happen (the route with the special character in the description was always there)