DNS server crashing repeatedly - OVA under Debian 12

Installation
1

My HA runs in a Virtualbox, host is a Debian 12 Linux. Core 2025.2.5.

Today, after restarting HA, various services fail due to network timeouts. The host system’s network works still well, including DNS. Wget from api.registry.platformio.org works on the host system but not within HA.

This points to a DNS issue in the HA system.

ha dns restart produces the same panic error message and shutdown again.
Here is the DNS protocol:

s6-rc: info: service s6rc-oneshot-runner: starting

s6-rc: info: service s6rc-oneshot-runner successfully started

s6-rc: info: service fix-attrs: starting

s6-rc: info: service fix-attrs successfully started

s6-rc: info: service legacy-cont-init: starting

cont-init: info: running /etc/cont-init.d/corefile.sh

cont-init: info: /etc/cont-init.d/corefile.sh exited 0

s6-rc: info: service legacy-cont-init successfully started

s6-rc: info: service legacy-services: starting

services-up: info: copying legacy longrun coredns (no readiness notification)

panic: descriptor Desc{fqName: "gt\"\x00\x00mstats_last_gc_time_seconds", help: "Number of seconds since 1970 of last garbage collection.", constLabels: {}, variableLabels: {}} is invalid: "gt\"\x00\x00mstats_last_gc_time_seconds" is not a valid metric name

goroutine 1 [running]:

github.com/prometheus/client_golang/prometheus.(*Registry).MustRegister(0x1b86980, {0xc000163180?, 0x1?, 0x1?})

/go/pkg/mod/github.com/prometheus/[email protected]/prometheus/registry.go:406 +0x66

github.com/prometheus/client_golang/prometheus.MustRegister(...)

/go/pkg/mod/github.com/prometheus/[email protected]/prometheus/registry.go:177

github.com/prometheus/client_golang/prometheus.init.0()

/go/pkg/mod/github.com/prometheus/[email protected]/prometheus/registry.go:62 +0xf3

[11:29:27] WARNING: Halt DNS plug-in with exit code 2

s6-rc: info: service legacy-services successfully started

s6-rc: info: service legacy-services: stopping

[11:29:28] INFO: Service restart after closing

s6-rc: info: service legacy-services successfully stopped

s6-rc: info: service legacy-cont-init: stopping

s6-rc: info: service legacy-cont-init successfully stopped

s6-rc: info: service fix-attrs: stopping

s6-rc: info: service fix-attrs successfully stopped

s6-rc: info: service s6rc-oneshot-runner: stopping

s6-rc: info: service s6rc-oneshot-runner successfully stopped
2

Hello Roland Hartmann-Haase,

Sometimes if the time is set improperly DNS queries freak out. (Especially DNSsec and the more advanced stuff)

Make sure your clocks and timezones are all reasonably correct.
Also restart the HA host incase it needs a reboot to sample the new info.

3

Thank you for these hints! Anyway, I couldn’t find evidence for a somehow compromized clock, so I went for reinstalling HA and restoring the backup. Fortunately I was able to create a valid backup first and didn’t loose too much data. Restore took many hours. Now I’m good again.