pfSense down hard after adding NIC

stephenw10

Yup, almost certainly that^.

You can probably just move the cables. igb0 and igb1 will now be ports on the card.

Steve

vMAC

@viragomann unfortunately I tried that and it didn't work. Just as the other posts states, when I plug in my network cables even though they light up. The device isn't detecting a link up/down. So I have no way of knowing which ports are labeled what. Auto detection isn't working.

My new question is of I factory reset and then restore backup, will I get myself into the same problem?

nimrod

@vmac

When restoring backup, you can chose what gets restored. You can restore everything except the interface configuration and you should be good.

JKnott

@vmac

Does that box have a serial port? That would be one way. What about keyboard & monitor connected to it?

JKnott

@nimrod

When I got a new computer for pfsense last year, I restored the previous configuration and then went in and made the necessary changes.

stephenw10

@vmac said in pfSense down hard after adding NIC:

when I plug in my network cables even though they light up. The device isn't detecting a link up/down. So I have no way of knowing which ports are labeled what.

How are you checking that?

You should just run ifconfig at the command line and see which NICs link.

Steve

vMAC

@nimrod said in pfSense down hard after adding NIC:

@vmac

When restoring backup, you can chose what gets restored. You can restore everything except the interface configuration and you should be good.

Thank you, I used my back from 11/4 and it got my interfaces back, and I could switch them from the GUI. Thank you

@jknott said in pfSense down hard after adding NIC:

@vmac

Does that box have a serial port? That would be one way. What about keyboard & monitor connected to it?

No serial port, but yes I had a monitor/keyboard I was able to hook it up.

@stephenw10 said in pfSense down hard after adding NIC:

@vmac said in pfSense down hard after adding NIC:

when I plug in my network cables even though they light up. The device isn't detecting a link up/down. So I have no way of knowing which ports are labeled what.

How are you checking that?

You should just run ifconfig at the command line and see which NICs link.

Steve

So in case someone else has this problem I'll explain a little further. Based on my troubleshooting I realized that the interfaces changed. So I determined that the best thing to do is Assign the Interfaces. When I did this it showed like 8 interfaces (which is about right considering my different vLAN interfaces, VPN, etc). The problem is I still didn't know which was which. So it asks you if you want to do "Auto" to identify which ports. To use this it requires you to disconnect all cables. Then when prompted it will ask you to insert cable and wait for it to "Link up" before pressing Enter for it to identify the port it is plugged into.

The issue is that it would not identify the port because it would never "Link up" even though the lights on the ethernet showed that their were collisions and link on those ports. I tried every port and none would Link when inputting the cable into the port though the lights showed they were. I didn't back out of the Assign Interface prompt to shell and then check ifconfig, but if someone else has this issue that may work, though I doubt it as pfSense wasn't showing that a "Link up" was made.

Thank you all for your help.

nimrod

IPFire has a neat feature that pfSense team should consider implementing. There is a test procedure during installation process where you can select NIC MAC and force NIC LED`s to blink for 10 seconds. This makes it much easier to identify physical ports.

stephenw10

A lot of NICs can't do that and there are things you can do in Linux that are not possible in FreeBSD. Though igb NICs probably could.

Steve

nimrod

@stephenw10

I was using GNU/Linux for 15 years. Last year i finally switched to FreeBSD as my daily driver and i never looked back. Linux kernel has become a bloated mess. And unlike modular GNU/Linux nightmare, FreeBSD is a complete operating system in every sense of the word. And i really love their strict RTFM community. And the fact that pfSense is based on FreeBSD makes me very happy.