Oh wow… Thanks. You are a life-saver.  ;D

Static routes work fine. You probably have asymmetric routing in that case, so you have to have the bypass filtering option for static routes enabled under System>Advanced.

No, there is no package for file server/file access type roles.

Sometimes the Alix with 256MB memory runs out of memory when downloading/installing packages, so the full package reload can die with killed "out of swap space" (= out of real memory on this hardware, there is no swap file). Look in the system log and see if you have any messages like that. After a few hours waiting, you can clear the package lock (I think it is in Diagnostics->NanoBSD) then go to System->Packages and install the things that did not install (or do a reinstall all packages).

I'm using the 64-bit build (2.1, not 2.0.3) on my DN2800MT, no issues at all.

@lindsay: It`s this one. I use an 4GB flash so the space is not a problem. This particular Soekris box seems quite low on both RAM and CPU … For the past 4-5 years people have been using the Alix 2d3 http://www.pcengines.ch/alix2d3.htm board for this task. Btw, even if you use 4GB flash, you might still want to use the 1GB image of pfSense (it'is supposed to help prolong the CF card's life, due to how the wear-levelling algo works)

Thank you, Its the first time that the entire concept of VLANs actually clicked for me so I am just a bit unsure of what is and isn't possible with them.

http://files.pfsense.org/netgate/ contains the current firmware files for those devices, they just haven't been put into the 'updates' directory for one reason or another there.

@stephenw10: Swapping out the cable is an easy test though.  ;) Steve Guess what? That solved it! Used a CAT-6 patch cable and now it works. Guess something is wrong with that other cable… Thank you SO much! I was about to give up. Had already downloaded Smoothwall, just to see if the issue was with pfSense on my box. Thanks a lot again. Now I got to get working with the configuration of the firewall. :)

Ideally, yes, that's how it's supposed to work. I'm not aware of any known issues in the upgrade process currently, but there is always a chance something may go awry. It's usually fairly uneventful.

When starting the RADIUS server with radiusd -X it must show you at the end the ports on which the server is listening. If it shows you the accouting port and interfaces and tells you "Ready to process requests" then the server is probably ok and running. More information will be shown on syslog if you enable logging on freeradius –> settings.

final post - solved the interrupt storm issue by enabling APIC in bios - one of the few options the board gave me. everything is up and running now, thank you again for your effort :)

WTF, you got it working out of the blue? how did it work for you ? have you done anything? at least post what you did so any other people who had/have same problem can follow your solution  ??? ??? ??? ??? ???

By far the best way to do this is to run both pfSense and your NAS product here virtualised. That way you minimise any customisation to pfSense which you will have to maintain. Steve

Nice! That doc talks about both of which I have in my server.  :o Ya, I figured the box was a little overkill but it was a good deal that I couldn't pass up. From what I have found the 2wire does not have a bridge mode, so I will have to try and change the IP range on the pfsense box. Give me a day or two and I will see what I get worked out.

I looked at a few of the crash dumps submitted from your IP address, and they were all different, seemingly in random places, and there were also some signal 11 errors. If it has DIMMs you can pull you might try swapping them out to make sure it isn't a RAM problem. The way it's acting is, in general, indicative of a hardware issue. Aside from RAM, it could equally be a power supply issue, cooling, the MB/BIOS, the HDD, some combination of the above, or a general issue with that hardware and FreeBSD.