Hello all, FYI: I have disabled Growl notifications and also the IP address field is blank. No issue any more. Thanks for your help.

That was the issue! We're using LDAP groups for access, and the permission was added to these groups.

I did some tests of reset to factory defaults using the reset button on an Alix 2D13: (a) Power on, wait 5 seconds, press reset button for 10 seconds, release (b) Power on, wait until console is showing the FreeBSD booting stuff, press reset button for 10 seconds, release Power on, wait until console is showing the pfSense booting stuff, press reset button for 10 seconds, release before/immediately you see "Launching the init system" (d) Power on, wait until console is showing "Launching the init system", press reset button until "Reset button pressed" message is displayed, release (e) Power on, wait a bit (5 to 60 seconds - no panic), while the left green LED is steady press the reset button, hold it until the 3 LEDs have been cycling a couple of seconds, release (a) (b) and (c) do NOT result in a reset to factory defaults. (d) and (e) DO result in a reset to factory defaults. If you can see the console output, then (d) is a useful guide. If you cannot see the console output (most likely scenario if you are needing to use the reset button), then (e) will guide you successfully. Note that it is 90 to 120 seconds from power on until the 3 LEDs start cycling, so there is no rush to get the reset button held in immediately you apply power.

Expected. You won't actually go to 2.3.2 if you're set to stable. https://lists.pfsense.org/pipermail/list/2016-May/009934.html

Ctrl + F5?

one more thing: I was very happy to do the upgrae remotley, b/c the two if with syntax error were LAN if and my remote access via VPN was luckily still working. So I was able to fix it easily ! Thanks!

pfSense 2.2.* is based on FreeBSD 10.1 pfSense 2.3.* is based on FreeBSD 10.3 So anything that happened for FreeBSD 10.2 and then 10.3 in regard to drivers etc would have the possibility to trigger different behaviour.

The thing is, I am seeing the long delays even when the router does have a working WAN connection.  If you log on to a fresh system, with the dashboard update check enabled, and while the gear is spinning try to navigate to another page, you will probably see it.  Delay of up to ~10 seconds. As soon as the check finishes, the navigation to the next page continues.

I just had a thought and ran truss against the pid, it appears to be stuck in some insane loop: statfs("/var/cache/pkg",0x7fffffffdfa8)          ERR#2 'No such file or directory' mkdir("/var",0777)                              ERR#17 'File exists' mkdir("/var/cache",0777)                        ERR#17 'File exists' mkdir("/var/cache/pkg",0777)                    ERR#17 'File exists' statfs("/var/cache/pkg",0x7fffffffdfa8)          ERR#2 'No such file or directory' mkdir("/var",0777)                              ERR#17 'File exists' mkdir("/var/cache",0777)                        ERR#17 'File exists' mkdir("/var/cache/pkg",0777)                    ERR#17 'File exists' statfs("/var/cache/pkg",0x7fffffffdfa8)          ERR#2 'No such file or directory' ^C [2.3-RELEASE][admin@router.home]/root: I renamed pkg to pkg.old and voila; the pkg upgrade worked. I don't understand how this happened though. This box was upgraded 2.1.x -> 2.2.x -> 2.3-RELEASE without any issues o.0 The file that was there was a symlink too: lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel    24 May  5 21:02 pkg.old -> ../../root/var/cache/pkg

@oletuv: Is the ADI version a specialized CE which will only install on pfSense/Netgate hardware? How does the ADI version differ from the CE? Yes, it just has to do with where it looks for the console port (I'm a web developer so not my domain). Which is why he is likely seeing boot issues.

The base layer always works, it's the extras that seem to have issues.  I can work through the squid stuff as I'm fairly proficient in that area.  I was just hoping that I could import my config without problems and move on from there.  I'll try again with the config import this Friday with em NICs on a clean VM.

How was this issue solved?

try this : pf2ad.mundounix.com.br/pt/index.html

OK, thanks for the info. Just had to force another reboot this morning. They never hang at the same time, so it can't be any cron-jobs at least. Will try to clean install 2.3.1 and see if this helps. These units have been around for a while and been updated over and over since 2.1-ish something, but only been on the stable releases. No other errors reported (SMART for example, they have 16GB SSD cards installed). /Mattias

its an old 6 port 'router' … ok, i was able to disable my old nic interfaces (the gigabit are still active) and retried. now im getting some vm_thread_new;kstack allocation failed.... panic.... doesnt sound good... (update: i used the extra boot options like safe  mode etc) the good thing is freebsd10.1-mini_usb does launch correctly. i get the root prompt and my nics are recognised [image: boot_halt.PNG] [image: boot_halt.PNG_thumb]

Thats very interesting: I seem limited on what I can include on the vpn settings, route-nopull seems not to be liked by sever and fails connection. firewall and NAT seem ok - well everything allowed - maybe I need stated destination and source - was just relying on letting everything pass thru I have tried using a vlan tag for the other routes but when tagged on the Unifi AP that ssid fails to connect and the AP eventually becomes unstable, so a bit stuck now. Can you elaborate on your settings?

Yes. Think of it as 2.3.0_1 and 2.3.1. There may be a 2.3.1_1, in which case you may or may not need a reboot. 2.3.2 will. Here is a comment by cmb about noting which upgrades will or will not need reboots: https://www.reddit.com/r/PFSENSE/comments/4jz1fb/231release_now_available/d3dmniu

I upgraded three systems to 2.3.1 that had quagga (four really, one was an HA cluster) and all were fine. Check to see if it's already running: : ps uxawww | grep quagga If you see it running, kill it and also rm /var/run/quagga/* And then restart from the GUI. If it's not running, try just the rm.