@torontob:

In production is the FW-7541 as reliable as Alix? I have Alix that have been running 24/7 for the past 4-5 years without any issues.

Well they haven't existed quite that long so I can't really say. :-)

They do quite well from what I've heard. Lots of customers have them and they're happy…

@tim.mcmanus:

Try installing 2.1.  There is broader chipset support in it.

I've tried 2.1 RC0 without success.
Just so you don't misinterpret me - pfSense has worked flawlessly since April - and only now started acting up. Or maybe it's my NIC. Anyway, I ordered a new one and hope it'll help.

yes. It shows up there.

Off the top of my head, I believe this can be done with PFsense and the BandwidthD package.  Others can chime in on a more polished package if one exists.

If you're looking for something that installs on the PC, I'd say Google your needs… e.g. "free bandwidth monitor", "free traffic monitor", etc.... there's a bunch of them out there... none that I've tried unfortunately.

Well - Like I said, the effectiveness of this will also depend on you getting things like "ultrasurf" off your network.

I did have a little conversation with some very smart people on that subject here:

http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,64432.msg349171.html#msg349171

Pay special attention to one post by phil.davis and how he handles port 53 with this solution.
Basically, you want to only allow access to port 53 to your pfsense box and the DNS servers at dyndns from the LAN.

You can set up your DYNdns filters at https://account.dyn.com/labs/dyn-internet-guide/              (log in to dyndns first)
Then click defense plan or default defense.  Modify it to block whatever you need blocked in the office)
You will need to also set up your dynamic DNS service in pfsense so that dyndns always knows your network's IP.
Then follow instruction I gave in the thread above.

Thank You to the suggestoins made to the syslog problem. After looking a second time,,I noticed this time in the syslog it was showing something about" kernel/boot was a binary files".( one line of logging)
I done a "Clear log" as suggested.
This got rid of 'the binary file ' thing',,and system log is working again now.

This machine actually panic rebooted ,again last night ,overnight,,,drove to the remote location where this pfSense machine resides to find one of the  case cooling fans had quit and the second case fan is barley turning so,,I'm sure it is overheating,,,not an pfSense/OS problem at all.

Take Care,
Barry

I think its smarter to put an extra NIC card in the pfsense so that you have

WAN  (assigned by ISP DHCP)  Plugged directly into modem
LAN (for you)        -  10.15.20.0/24
OPT (for visitors)  -  10.15.21.0/24

Then plug an AP into OPT1 port for visitors.  Bind Captive portal to OPT1
If the AP gets a STATIC IP on the OPT1, you can allow just that 1 IP to LAN net (10.15.20.0/24) in Firewall Rules. 
Then:
In firewall rules for interface OPT1 block any with DESTINATION LAN net  (10.15.20.0/24)  (Before the pass everything rule)

The AP interface should be available to you.

Your solution still works - it sometimes might work for an even wider audience than planned.
My real office users have desktops in the domain, or laptops for which they do not have admin privilege. So they can't change their allocated DNS server and can't add 1,000 naughty name/address pairs to their hosts file. All DHCP for allowed/known devices are static mapped. General devices in the DHCP pool get addresses in a range that has internet access blocked. When someone arrives with a new allowed device they have to get the WiFi password, connect, then we find them in the DHCP pool and static map them to their proper allocated address. Of course, someone can connect by cable to a real wall socket, set at suitable IP address and get access - but these days most people want to get their mobile device onto the WiFi, so they are stuck at step 1 getting the WiFi password.
I block any TCP+UDP to port 53 !LANaddress - then people with personal devices can set whatever DNS server they like, all the ones other than the one provided on the pfSense will simply not respond/work.
These people with personal devices could still load up a hosts file with a list of naughty site names and IP addresses that they get from somewhere, but they know the organisation policy and that there would be big trouble if they were caught going to those lengths to access prohibited material.
For me, the DNS provider filtering option is quite effective, simple to use and cheap!

Thank you sir.  Will have to wait for 2.1.  I've got 1.2.3 as the rock solid ones in production.

Looks like I have the double-whammy with both igb interfaces (Intel expansion slot) as well as Broadcom on board. Thanks for the quick response, I'll deploy this on the two firewalls I'm building for the local office. I'll definitely let you know if this fixes the issue.

Thanks

We don't officially have any support for disk encryption, but FreeBSD does. It does require manually entering the password, otherwise as doktornotor said it would be pretty worthless. You can have security, or you can have convenience, you can almost never have both.

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/handbook/disks-encrypting.html

You need an unencrypted section of the disk in addition to the encrypted section (or two separate disks), I don't believe it supports booting from an encrypted disk for some obvious reasons.

If you're that worried about someone stealing the CF, then you either need to not keep such sensitive data on it, or invest in some good physical security measures to keep it physically safe and locked up.

Sure, XMLRPC works with or without CARP. Some people use it just to sync aliases and such.

I should note that this is 2.1 because of RADIUS/IPSec

The haproxy package on pfSense 2.x is already on 1.4.24. Just reinstall the package and you'll be OK.

Or I use the option virtual ips?
http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/What_are_Virtual_IP_Addresses%3F

Like this? http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Comparison_to_Commercial_Alternatives

Steve

@wallabybob:

This is the sort of symptom you would see if mbufs (kernel network buffers) are (nearly) exhausted. pfSense shell command```
netstat -m

reports mbuf statistics. It could be worth running a shell script on the console to loop giving a timestamp, reporting the statistics and sleeping for an hour. You could also run that in a SSH session to capture history while the console run will (hopefully) give you statistics after you lose network access.

I wish mbuf counts were on an rrd graph in pfsense.  It is such an important thing to keep an eye out for.  It would be great to see the history of that over time.

Thinking about it… It would be great if we could get a consensus on some very important things to monitor like this and get a script going to send an email alert when the values are approaching the maximum values.