E
Ok, I've now also created a script. Instead of using external sites, I'm now just checking if the WAN adapter (igb1) has an IPv4 address. If not, it waits 2 minutes and tries again. If it still has no IPv4 address, it issues the same commands as the other scripts: ifconfig down, ifconfig up, dhclient (not sure if the last one is necessary). It does not include rebooting the firewall, because I think this is overkill. Actually I just wanted to force-renew the DHCP client lease, but I couldn't get that to work, although I looked at what the PHP source is doing.
I'm using this script now:
#!/bin/sh
wan="igb1"
LOGFILE=/var/log/pingtest.log
currip=$(ifconfig $wan | grep "inet " | cut -d " " -f 2)
if test -z "$currip"; then
echo `date +%Y%m%d.%H%M%S` "Detected empty IP on $wan! Will try again in 120 seconds." >> $LOGFILE
sleep 120
currip=$(ifconfig $wan | grep "inet " | cut -d " " -f 2)
if test -z "$currip"; then
echo `date +%Y%m%d.%H%M%S` "2nd try: Still empty IP on $wan! Will fix now." >> $LOGFILE
ifconfig $wan down
sleep 10
ifconfig $wan up
sleep 20
dhclient $wan
echo `date +%Y%m%d.%H%M%S` "Fixing done!" >> $LOGFILE
else
echo `date +%Y%m%d.%H%M%S` "2nd try: $wan has IP $currip; ok" >> $LOGFILE
fi
else
echo `date +%Y%m%d.%H%M%S` "$wan has IP $currip; ok" >> $LOGFILE
fi
If you want to use it, you would have to do the following:
Diagnostics / Edit File: Enter file name /usr/local/bin/pingtest.sh and paste the file from above in there and click Save. Update igb1 with the name of your WAN interface. That name is visible in Status / Interfaces in the title. For me it says there: "WAN Interface (wan, igb1)"
Diagnostics / Command: "chmod +x /usr/local/bin/pingtest.sh" (without quotes) and click Execute. This makes the file runnable.
System / Package Manager / Available Packages: Install Cron. To my understanding, this is just the user interface for Cron.
Services / Cron / Settings: Leave the existing packages there and add a new one.
Minute: "/10" (without quotes) or just "" for every minute, but every 10 minutes should be fine and avoids filling up the log.
Other values: "*", User: "root", Command: "/usr/local/bin/pingtest.sh"
From time to time you can take a look at the log file "/var/log/pingtest.log" and maybe delete it to avoid that it's getting too big.
For me this works now if I restart the modem. If even works if I schedule it to every minute; then two scripts will be running at the same time, but due to the 2 minute delay and retest, it works fine too. Without the second test it also worked, but then it already issues a fix while starting up, so it tries to fix it twice. I wanted to avoid that. We'll see how this works in the coming months/years.
For me this is a clear bug in pfSense, as this happens with many different modems and searching through the forum shows that many people have this problem. Even if the modem is the culprit, I still think pfSense should be able to recover, because with other clients it works fine.
