cmd/tailscaled: don't block ipnserver startup behind engine init on Windows

With this change, the ipnserver's safesocket.Listen (the localhost
tcp.Listen) happens right away, before any synchronous
TUN/DNS/Engine/etc setup work, which might be slow, especially on
early boot on Windows.

Because the safesocket.Listen starts up early, that means localhost
TCP dials (the safesocket.Connect from the GUI) complete successfully
and thus the GUI avoids the MessageBox error. (I verified that
pacifies it, even without a Listener.Accept; I'd feared that Windows
localhost was maybe special and avoided the normal listener backlog).

Once the GUI can then connect immediately without errors, the various
timeouts then matter less, because the backend is no longer trying to
race against the GUI's timeout. So keep retrying on errors for a
minute, or 10 minutes if the system just booted in the past 10
minutes.

This should fix the problem with Windows 10 desktops auto-logging in
and starting the Tailscale frontend which was then showing a
MessageBox error about failing to connect to tailscaled, which was
slow coming up because the Windows networking stack wasn't up
yet. Fingers crossed.

Fixes #1313 (previously #1187, etc)

Signed-off-by: Brad Fitzpatrick <bradfitz@tailscale.com>

cmd/tailscaled/tailscaled_windows.go

@@ -159,18 +159,16 @@ func beFirewallKillswitch() bool {
 
 func startIPNServer(ctx context.Context, logid string) error {
 	var logf logger.Logf = log.Printf
-	var eng wgengine.Engine
-	var err error
 
-	getEngine := func() (wgengine.Engine, error) {
+	getEngineRaw := func() (wgengine.Engine, error) {
 		dev, devName, err := tstun.New(logf, "Tailscale")
 		if err != nil {
-			return nil, err
+			return nil, fmt.Errorf("TUN: %w", err)
 		}
 		r, err := router.New(logf, dev)
 		if err != nil {
 			dev.Close()
-			return nil, err
+			return nil, fmt.Errorf("Router: %w", err)
 		}
 		if wrapNetstack {
 			r = netstack.NewSubnetRouterWrapper(r)
@@ -179,7 +177,7 @@ func startIPNServer(ctx context.Context, logid string) error {
 		if err != nil {
 			r.Close()
 			dev.Close()
-			return nil, err
+			return nil, fmt.Errorf("DNS: %w", err)
 		}
 		eng, err := wgengine.NewUserspaceEngine(logf, wgengine.Config{
 			Tun:        dev,
@@ -190,7 +188,7 @@ func startIPNServer(ctx context.Context, logid string) error {
 		if err != nil {
 			r.Close()
 			dev.Close()
-			return nil, err
+			return nil, fmt.Errorf("Engine: %w", err)
 		}
 		onlySubnets := true
 		if wrapNetstack {
@@ -199,60 +197,82 @@ func startIPNServer(ctx context.Context, logid string) error {
 		return wgengine.NewWatchdog(eng), nil
 	}
 
-	if msg := os.Getenv("TS_DEBUG_WIN_FAIL"); msg != "" {
-		err = fmt.Errorf("pretending to be a service failure: %v", msg)
-	} else {
-		// We have a bunch of bug reports of wgengine.NewUserspaceEngine returning a few different errors,
-		// all intermittently. A few times I (Brad) have also seen sporadic failures that simply
-		// restarting fixed. So try a few times.
-		for try := 1; try <= 5; try++ {
-			if try > 1 {
-				// Only sleep a bit. Don't do some massive backoff because
-				// the frontend GUI has a 30 second timeout on connecting to us,
-				// but even 5 seconds is too long for them to get any results.
-				// 5 tries * 1 second each seems fine.
-				time.Sleep(time.Second)
-			}
-			eng, err = getEngine()
+	type engineOrError struct {
+		Engine wgengine.Engine
+		Err    error
+	}
+	engErrc := make(chan engineOrError)
+	t0 := time.Now()
+	go func() {
+		const ms = time.Millisecond
+		for try := 1; ; try++ {
+			logf("tailscaled: getting engine... (try %v)", try)
+			t1 := time.Now()
+			eng, err := getEngineRaw()
+			d, dt := time.Since(t1).Round(ms), time.Since(t1).Round(ms)
 			if err != nil {
-				logf("wgengine.NewUserspaceEngine: (try %v) %v", try, err)
-				continue
+				logf("tailscaled: engine fetch error (try %v) in %v (total %v, sysUptime %v): %v",
+					try, d, dt, windowsUptime().Round(time.Second), err)
+			} else {
+				if try > 1 {
+					logf("tailscaled: got engine on try %v in %v (total %v)", try, d, dt)
+				} else {
+					logf("tailscaled: got engine in %v", d)
+				}
 			}
-			if try > 1 {
-				logf("wgengine.NewUserspaceEngine: ended up working on try %v", try)
+			timer := time.NewTimer(5 * time.Second)
+			engErrc <- engineOrError{eng, err}
+			if err == nil {
+				timer.Stop()
+				return
 			}
-			break
+			<-timer.C
 		}
-	}
-	if err != nil {
-		// Log the error, but don't fatalf. We want to
-		// propagate the error message to the UI frontend. So
-		// we continue and tell the ipnserver to return that
-		// in a Notify message.
-		logf("wgengine.NewUserspaceEngine: %v", err)
-	}
+	}()
+
 	opts := ipnserver.Options{
 		Port:               41112,
 		SurviveDisconnects: false,
 		StatePath:          args.statepath,
 	}
-	if err != nil {
-		// Return nicer errors to users, annotated with logids, which helps
-		// when they file bugs.
-		rawGetEngine := getEngine // raw == without verbose logid-containing error
-		getEngine = func() (wgengine.Engine, error) {
-			eng, err := rawGetEngine()
-			if err != nil {
-				return nil, fmt.Errorf("wgengine.NewUserspaceEngine: %v\n\nlogid: %v", err, logid)
-			}
-			return eng, nil
+
+	// getEngine is called by ipnserver to get the engine. It's
+	// not called concurrently and is not called again once it
+	// successfully returns an engine.
+	getEngine := func() (wgengine.Engine, error) {
+		if msg := os.Getenv("TS_DEBUG_WIN_FAIL"); msg != "" {
+			return nil, fmt.Errorf("pretending to be a service failure: %v", msg)
+		}
+		for {
+			res := <-engErrc
+			if res.Engine != nil {
+				return res.Engine, nil
+			}
+			if time.Since(t0) < time.Minute || windowsUptime() < 10*time.Minute {
+				// Ignore errors during early boot. Windows 10 auto logs in the GUI
+				// way sooner than the networking stack components start up.
+				// So the network will fail for a bit (and require a few tries) while
+				// the GUI is still fine.
+				continue
+			}
+			// Return nicer errors to users, annotated with logids, which helps
+			// when they file bugs.
+			return nil, fmt.Errorf("%w\n\nlogid: %v", res.Err, logid)
 		}
-	} else {
-		getEngine = ipnserver.FixedEngine(eng)
 	}
-	err = ipnserver.Run(ctx, logf, logid, getEngine, opts)
+	err := ipnserver.Run(ctx, logf, logid, getEngine, opts)
 	if err != nil {
 		logf("ipnserver.Run: %v", err)
 	}
 	return err
 }
+
+var (
+	kernel32           = windows.NewLazySystemDLL("kernel32.dll")
+	getTickCount64Proc = kernel32.NewProc("GetTickCount64")
+)
+
+func windowsUptime() time.Duration {
+	r, _, _ := getTickCount64Proc.Call()
+	return time.Duration(int64(r)) * time.Millisecond
+}