The link in the first reply contains a link to the blog post which is our official response to the dnsmasq CVE: https://www.netgate.com/blog/no-plan-survives-contact-with-the-internet.html That link contains information on how to upgrade the dnsmasq version in place on 2.3.4-p1 without needing a full firmware upgrade. As for your console, that looks like a faulty cable or connection in some way. Without knowing anything about the hardware or how you are connecting to the console, we can't give you any solid suggestions other than to try a new cable. If you purchased that device from Netgate, contact our support team at https://customercare.netgate.com/ and someone can lead you in the right direction for the console access issue. For factory reset, it has never been intended to be a complete reset in the way you describe. The only way to accomplish that is with a complete reinstall from an installation disk or other installation media.

You can't add a USB serial adapter as a console, at least not that I've ever seen work. The USB device is not present early enough for it to be viable as a console for debugging purposes. It's a path that only leads to anger, heartache, and disappointment. You can turn a cheap rpi or similar into a network/OOB USB serial console mux/server that connects to loads of other USB serial consoles quickly and easily with off the shelf hardware and without modding anything. Just USB hub(s) and such.

Very good point  :)

Glad you fixed it, now maybe you can work on fixing that camera shake  ;D

@stephenw10: great, thanks for your informative answer. My OCD can rest now ;)

Got it.  Good info to have.  I was unaware on several of these items.  Thank you!

Still very valuable, even more so when it comes to schools!

I gave it some airflow assistance with a 4-inch USB fan, and it has been stable now since yesterday. Heat dissipation could indeed be an issue with these units.

It will never have the same performance as SSD. It is a USB device, not SATA.

Very encouraging to hear that.  Thanks for the information!

Open a support ticket at customercare.netgate.com?

@p2ranger: Thanks for the replies I apologize for not citing needs for future LAN ports. For now we don't need it, but I'm not quite sure what future need that might arise that would require us to need an additional port. As far as I can tell, the switch is where we have the need for ports at this time. I'm still learning my way around networking. Could you give me some examples of what an additional LAN port at the router level would be used for? Thanks Jason Sure! With more networking ports you can have two internet connections in multi-wan scenario. So when ISP1 breaks, pfSense automatically switches to ISP2. You can also use a free port to create a separate network for your wifi users. Just an example. Please let me know if you have more questions!

Thank you for that. The wiki page had some holes in terms of explaining the steps but a google search on the correct terms filled in all the blanks.  Shame you need to have a login to update the wiki, prevents people from making quick suggested edits. Using screen as a serial terminal is amazing on OSX.

I am still working on this.  At this time I am not completely sure what is going on.  I am going to be setting this firewall up in my lab and run some tests.

I have a run(4) device that works just fine as an access point but I've never been able to make it work usefully as a client. Try configuring them both as APs and see if they work fine like that. If not there might be a power issue though I wouldn't expect it. Steve