It turns out that there was a configuration error upstream, so nothing was getting to the firewall from the outside at all. I'm sure there's some tuning to do, but I'm extremely happy with the job that pfSense is doing now.

Van

I would bind squid to any interface that is going to have users doing browsing.  I think for you that is all except WAN.  Make sure you've switched your GUI to run on HTTPS so there are no port conflicts on port 80.

As for caching windows update, there is nothing special to do.  Just make sure you set the 'Maximum Object Size' to something like 262144 (256Mb) if you want to grab items like windows update.  I've noticed this helps a lot across the board with any updates, not just MS (think AOL, AIM, P2P programs).  That said, I was having some issues with the most recent version of Squid not serving anything from cache, but that's another issue.

No I didn't actually because there was a time pressure and i had to put it again in production as soon as possible so didn't made more tests…but i will try again when i will have time ;)

thank you

:(

[SOLVED!]
right i've fixed it! I moved the virtual onto another PC that had dual onboard nics. One a Marvell tech nic and the other an Nvidia Nic (see where I'm going here?). I disabled the Nvidia Nic in the bios and slapped a spare  3Com card I had lying around into a PCI slot and presto worked first time!

Looks like the forcedeth driver doesn't play well will vmware on ubuntu 8.04.2, I'm kicking myself as I usually make sure the hardware is solid because I know how twitchy vmware is with network hardware…It worked fist time so I'll be switiching out the 3scom for 2x netgear at some point!!!!

Read/Write throughput isn't the end-all-be-all of performance.  Access time is VERY important when working with tiny bits of data and on that front an SLC SSD (be it Compact Flash, DoM, 2.5" SATA) will destroy a normal disk.  I'd say you'll be fine as long as your device supports DMA (PIO4 is still 20MB/s but it comes with high CPU usage).

To osopolis:  I'm not sure that a single core Pentium 4 will be able to deal with 400Mbit/s, though I'll admit that I've never tried to route that much traffic through anything but an actual hardware router (not to mention that that chip is going to run hot as hell, what is that, TDP of 120W?).  You'd probably be better off with something newer like a Intel E7400 or the Xeon equivalent.  Also, make sure you get Server network cards (or at least Intel Desktop cards) as cheap Realtek parts (or anything similar) aren't going to be able to keep up.

I was having a similar boot error on pfsense 1.2.2 after the full live CD ISO install:

hptrr: no controller found
ad4: FAILURE - SET_MULTI status=51 <ready,dsc,error>error=4 <aborted>My Hardware:

Motherboard  SuperServer 5015B-MRB
http://www.supermicro.com/products/system/1U/5015/SYS-5015B-MR.cfm

Processor    Xeon Dual Core 3065 2.33 4M 1333fsb Boxed

Memory    4GB (4 x 1GB) 667MHz DDRII Unbuffered ECC Memory

I installed pfsense with no swap on a 40 Pin IDE 1GB Dual embedded disk module (SLC).

http://www.innodisk.com/production.jsp?flashid=81

I ended up changing the BIOS setting for this IDE ad4 device by entering the BIOS ~~and selecting:

Ext. Primary Master [1048MB]

and changing the settings from [auto] to [user]

and changing the Transfer Mode to [FPIO 4 / DMA 2]

and changing the Ultra DMA Mode to [Mode 4]

After doing this, everything booted fine.

-Will http://www.tranquilnet.com~~</aborted></ready,dsc,error>

No.

You might try some of the suggestions from the Doc Wiki:

http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Boot_Troubleshooting

It works for me too as of the pfSense-1.2.3-20090224-1127.iso snapshot.

There was others before that which worked, but had other installer issues. (They tried to put gmirror support back into the installer, in addition to having the libraries on the CD, but it wasn't working properly.)

unfortunately, the update didn't fix the problem. Still needs to restart the firewall to get the flow going again. Any ideas?

What does your Xen config look like?

I have a setup almost like this working at the moment. booted up from the livecd and installed on a flash drive (have ata 2 CF adapter installed). This works great.

It seems the nic on the WAN was faulty.  I replaced it as a last resort, and everything worked after that.  :-)

Yeah it's a FreeBSD issue. I suggest trying 1.2.3 as it's based on a newer FreeBSD release.

@dA_vO:

Same problem here. :(

And you can tell that you're using exactly the same hardware and version of pfSense as akus despite him not posting enough to be able to tell - I'm impressed!

The symptoms may be similar, but the problem isn't likely to be the same.  If you're having problems you'll need to post more than "me too".  Details of the hardware you're using, version of pfSense you're using, what the problem is and where it happens.  I'd also suggest you search the forum and read the wiki.

Thanks for the quick response and the info.

I installed version 1.2.3 before the office filled up with people. It is running now for 2 hours without any issue. The boot process was normal.

I also suspected some hardware hassle. Typically I would assume timing or temperature being involved in such a case. I just do not have any explanation why this happens at the same point during the boot process and never during normal operation.

When the office gets empty I will perform more boot tests to see whether the issue is solved with the new FreeBSD or not.

Christian

@hopeless:

yes but my problem is that I cant access the web gui…..

The second part of my previous answer attempted to respond to your issue accessing the web GUI.

boot number 3 - Safe mode, you will have to be quick when pressing 3 in the menu.
then edit /boot/loader.conf and add

hw.ata.ata_dma="0"
hw.ata.atapi_dma="0"

this will take care of the DMA and your system will start fine with the default boot.

Thanx,

I DL one of the images at this site, and installed it! Only problem I had was that I could'nt find what image to use. The one I DL seemd to be for PC, and I use a net48xx (former m0n0wall), and it wouldn't start by it self. Had to use Terminal after every reboot  ;D

Well with your information in mind I DL the image for 128MB from pfsense, worked perfect. I did however have some problems with physdiskwrite and Vista (runed as admin). Moved over to a XP machine everything OK.

So, thanx a lot!