What it should do (i think) is issue or not issue the "ifconfig-pool net/mask" option in the config file (if you follow the logic). But, I found the following, from my observations: if you try to use "ifconfig-pool" in the advanced options, you get an error (in the logs) saying that you cannot use ifconfig-pool and "server" at the same time, because "server" already creates a pool for you. Indeed there's a "server" option in the config. the server option is not very flexible because it is kind of a ifconfig + ifconfig-pool in the same option, and the server takes the 1st address and all the rest of the entire range is reserved for the pool. I like to issue a ifconfig-pool where I use only a portion of the range, leaving another portion to static IPs in the client overrides. from googling, it seems that in the old days there was a configuration text filed where you would indicate the range for dinamic assignation (just what I expected) and that would issue a separate ifconfig-pool config option (or not). I was then changed to, when on  (presumably) issue a server command taking all the range and (presumably) when off, switching that command back to a normal/simple ifconfig (which I would be happy with because it would allow me to issue a ifconfig-pool in the advanced options). In the current state it seems useless. But maybe I'm missing something.

Is this a known issue? By the way, this happens only if my default gateway (VDSL1) reconnect. Update: Have a look on a other pfsense with only one pppoe wan connection, ntp work here fine. See in the log that the ntp server stop for a reconnect of the wan pppoe connection, is it possible that the ntp server start again to fast? Update2: "fixed" it with the Service Watchdog package  ;)

I try this this tonight. Many thanks. Nico38.

That looks like a device already in modem mode (PID: 1506). Exactly what devices do you have in /dev? Please copy and paste the output of: ls /dev/cu* What was the result of trying to setup a ppp interface? What did the ppp log say? Steve Edit: The Huawei E5331 is a mobile hotspot device. Is that what you have? How are you connecting to it?

@loupalladino: Do you have Nagios by chance? Not yet, but is planned for 2014  ;)

Bravo johnpoz for hanging in there. I like nothing more than to help people understand networking - so I sure hope this helps the light bulb turn on for you Indeed you must.  And I'm sure you helped someperson472034.  In enjoyed reading your networking explanation as well.

Yes you can do all of that. Q1. If you have firewall rules in place pfSense will route traffic between the subnets. You can access a server at, say, 192.168.3.10 from a machine at 192.168.2.20 by simply entering it's IP. No need to bridge the subnets which would effectively make one big subnet. If you want to access servers by name you can add DNS overide entries to allow that. One area that can cause problems here is if you want to browse network shares. Generally the client OS will only look for servers inside it's own subnet. If you are running Windows clients and you have a Windows server you can specify the address of that as the WINS server in the DHCP information which will allow clients to know where to look. Q2. Yep, port forwards are easy enough and well documented. https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/How_can_I_forward_ports_with_pfSense%3F Q3. Yep, traffic shaping on a per IP basis can be done. A better configuration would be to bridge your router so that your public IP is on the pfSense WAN interface. That will, as you say, make port forwarding easier. Steve

I was having an issue where my WAN interface would not stay up.  I switched the WAN interface from em5 to em0 and found the problem was resolved.  Every other time I've plugged anything into em5, same result.  My issue seems to have been simply hardware related. Maybe swap interface assignments and see if you get the same result on the the same NIC.  If so, it's most likely hardware related.  If the problem moves to the WAN interface on the new NIC, the problem is probably generated by a conflict between the pf box and the router/modem, or some other ISP setting. At least, that sounds logical to me!  : )

I was able to figure it out. pgrep: invalid pid in file '/var/dhcpd/var/run/dhcpd.pid' I deleted the contents of this file and restarted DHCP and everything is working now! :)

not sure exactly what you are asking but I do know exchange activesync need ports 990,999 and 5678 - 5679  forwarded to work.  Of course you need ports for smtp(s) and perhaps pop3(s) and/or imap(s) opened.  Also a submission port if you use that. you will need port 443 forwarded if you use owa

Not sure if this will help but I had a similar issue on my Asus router. in the dnsmasq custom config I had to put these settings to make the error stop rebind-domain-ok=/yourdomain.com/ server=/yourdomain.com/xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (this is your local dns server ip) server=//xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (this is your local dns server ip) obviously make the correct changes and leave my comments out.

Normally the admin user is always locked into /etc/rc.initial as its shell. If it doesn't come up, then either someone manually edited the code or the passwd file to change the shell, or otherwise changed the .*rc files in /root, or maybe the passwd database has become corrupt in some way. Often just an edit/save action on the admin user in the GUI is enough to fix things up, assuming the pfSense code was not modified. In other cases the passwd database has to be manually rebuilt using "pwd_mkdb -p /etc/master.passwd" or similar.

What you're talking about sounds perfect. I don't have a development environment at home, but I'll see if this is something I can pull off. Thanks for your input.

thanks jim

I run vms at home - and I am against such a joining as well.  Don't see any reason that makes sense.  It makes more sense to just fire up a VM and use an OS/Distro geared towards being a NAS vs using my firewall to provide my storage. I just can not see a reason why anyone would do or want such a thing to be honest. If they want such a box maybe they should look to something like http://www.clearfoundation.com/Software/overview.html which is one of those Do everything Distros - acts as your gateway while also being your storage, LDAP, email server, etc.. etc.. Just because pfsense and freenas share a common core OS freebsd does not mean they need to join forces ;)