Continuous error messages: [ERR] CMGR: chacha20poly1305: message authentication failed

[dunkfan]

Thanks for clues as to how to deal with error messages of the form:
[ERR] CMGR: Can't accept connection: unable to accept connection from 127.0.0.1:60446: chacha20poly1305: message authentication failed

I was advised that this is normal behaviour.
If it is, why is it marked with [ERR]

[guggero]

It is an error in the sense that a connection couldn't be established correctly because the authentication failed. So if this was another node attempting to connect to yours using the p2p network, you'd want to know what goes wrong.
Unfortunately, since you need to open your p2p port to the internet to be reachable, that means automated port scanning tools will also find your node and attempt to connect. But because they don't "speak" the correct encryption protocol, the connection fails.

[dunkfan]

Thanks. If you are going through a vpn where only one clearnet IP:port is mapped to the phyiscal node how is P2P supposed to work? Presumably that will cause this sort of error.
How do you configure p2p for a connection to a single remote node using such a vpn clearnet IP address (externalhosts) setup?
Thanks for pointing to some documentation if you can.

[guggero]

You mean that your own node's p2p port is only exposed through a VPN, to hide your actual destination IP? Something like https://tunnelsats.com/?
Then the same issue remains. Because the p2p port is still accessible from the internet on the VPN server, each port scan connection attempt is forwarded to your node anyway, resulting in the same error message. The only difference is that in the log now you see the IP address from the local VPN tunnel endpoint (127.0.0.1 in your case).