Shut down PFsense on PC and not have to restore?

jsmiddleton4

@bmeeks

Merry Christmas

Dell 390, i5 CPU, 8gb ram, 320gb ata hard drive.

The file is there, which is part of the confusion.

Next time I’m just going to boot a second time.

I have 3 2.5gb Intel NIC’s. One is WAN, 2 go to LAN. The 1gb Realtek is part of the LAN bridge.

johnpoz

@jsmiddleton4 said in Shut down PFsense on PC and not have to restore?:

2 go to LAN. The 1gb Realtek is part of the LAN bridge.

So you got some "bridge" setup with 3 interfaces in it?

How about just putting 1 interface in lan, do you have problem then?

jsmiddleton4

@johnpoz

Yes, 3 NIC’s in the Bridge.

Double booting works. I was too curious not to check tonight. Not even a nice reboot either. Control Alt Delete when asked the question to use the RE0 as the WAN. Figure if I told it yes possible to be writing a new config.xml.

So the working XML is there, has to be.

Why double boot works? Timing?

stephenw10

The description in igc as an Intel 1G NIC is just that, only the description.

Those NICs will always be igc.

The problem here is nothing to do with losing the config and everything to do with assigned NICs going missing. When it boots to the assign interfaces screen look at the available NICs list, something there will be missing, what is it?

It sounds like the hardware is not being initialized correctly under some conditions. Check the boot log for errors when that happens. Maybe some PCI error or a driver failing to attach for some reason.
There's probably nothing you can do about it in pfSense though other than upgrading to 2.6. It could well be the PHY reset issue in igc that is bow fixed there.

Steve

jsmiddleton4

@stephenw10

Merry Christmas

I appreciated your insight but I feel like I’m answering the same questions. The IGC, Intel 2.5gb, cards are missing. None of them found be it the one that is the WAN, or 2 that are LAN and part of my bridge.

Now with a quick reboot, PFSense finds them.

The only card the initial boot finds is the RE0, Realtek, card.

I looked in the OS log and there’s nothing that looks out of order. No error messages, no “This is missing” messages. But having booted without answering the “Want to configure RE0 as the WAN?”, I could be circumventing any error messages being recorded in the OS Boot log.

For whatever reason with a power off or a significant delay in the boot process such as entering the BIOS, PFSense when booting doesn’t “see” the Intel cards. Again for whatever reason, a quick reboot without answering any interface assignment questions when coming back up a second time does.

stephenw10

It doesn't show 'device attach 6' or similar? It probably is the PHY issue:
https://github.com/pfsense/FreeBSD-src/commit/267a39780ea8c89b7a89ca9e91dcfff02c69656f

jsmiddleton4

@stephenw10

No attach anything.

This is the only line with “error” in it.

module_register_init: MOD_LOAD (vesa, 0xffffffff8140c3e0, 0) error 19

jsmiddleton4

@stephenw10

Is that one of those patches I should use the Patch Package to update?

stephenw10

No that's a change to the driver code that's compiled when pfSense is built. You cannot apply it runtime.

jsmiddleton4

@stephenw10

That’s a good thing. I didn’t want to tackle one more learning curve.

At least it not working has an explanation.

I’m on to figuring out how to run the test program for my APC UPS.

Edit: If I understand the information on the PHY matter why the second boot works also make sense. That kind of boot resets what isn’t being reset. Once reset, PFSense “sees” the NIC’s correctly.

IF I understand it correctly……..

stephenw10

Mmm, though I expect to see an attach error when it fails. Some discussion of it here: https://forum.netgate.com/post/1008320
The error looks like:

igc0: <Intel(R) Ethernet Controller I225-LM> mem 0xf7c00000-0xf7cfffff,0xf7d00000-0xf7d03fff irq 16 at device 0.0 on pci3
igc0: Setup of Shared code failed, error -2
igc0: IFDI_ATTACH_PRE failed 6
device_attach: igc0 attach returned 6
igc0: <Intel(R) Ethernet Controller I225-LM> mem 0xf7900000-0xf79fffff,0xf7a00000-0xf7a03fff irq 18 at device 0.0 on pci6
igc0: Setup of Shared code failed, error -2
igc0: IFDI_ATTACH_PRE failed 6
device_attach: igc0 attach returned 6

It's fixed in 2.6. I've been running that (22.01) here as my edge box for months.

Steve

jsmiddleton4

@stephenw10

Nothing like that in any of my logs.

Might be though. When I didn’t double boot I still over wrote everything with the restore.