Shutdown - Halt
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Hey y'alls....
I have a serious question regarding the best practice of shutting down the pfsense+ box - more specifically for me, SG-3100.
Why didn't pfsense have a "shutdown" implemented into their OS? This "Halt" option is not enough.
Last night, I was rewiring my network rack, I went to do a "Halt" and wait for the completion via console view to ensure I don't rush into pulling the plug. Then, I go to unplug the power cord to fix some writing issues I wanted to tidy up. When I go to plug it back in, it gets stuck in, from console view, "Marvell>>" menu. It does it almost every single time.
Or, am I doing it the wrong way?
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If it's stops at the uboot prompt it's unable to boot at all. That means either it's trying to boot incorrectly or what's trying to boot isn't present.
What errors does it show at the console before dropping to the prompt?
If you enter 'boot' at that prompt does it boot correctly?
Steve
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@stephenw10 Hi Steve!
There was no error, it just got stuck on uboot/Marvell>> on the console. I did type boot, but nothing happened. I had no choice but to unplug and wait 1 min and plug it back in. Then everything's back up.
It would be great and make life easier if there was a "shutdown" method implemented to avoid situation like this.
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There is no shutdown because the ARM architecture doesn't have a standby power mode like x86 does. But that doesn't matter in respect to powering it off, the filesystem is unmounted correctly and power can be removed at that point. The only problem is that there's no way to indicate that it has halted on the device itself.
However what you're describing is not a filesystem issue.After the unit has been halted power cycling it is the expected method of booting it again.
Are you saying you have to power cycle it twice?if it reaches the Marvell> prompt it either failed to boot and there would be errors shown or uboot was manually interrupted.
Steve
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S stephenw10 moved this topic from General pfSense Questions on
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@stephenw10 Roger that... I was serious tempted to buy a better hardware and get away from ARM and use that as a backup.
On my console, I selected 6 for Halted. I select yes and wait until the prompt says you can either reset or reboot. As you described in your message, I can power off at that point. I was being careful as to not run into filesystem issue.
Instead, it gets stuck on the "Marvell>>" screen. It would not boot the OS. There was no error on screen. So, what I did was just pull the plug, wait 1 min and plug it back in, there is the filesystem being loaded and booted 100% up to the WebGUI just fine.
Not to mentioned this filesystem was freshly reloaded with the new image of 22.01. I might consider on getting a better Intel CPU to avoid this as I would like to have the shutdown method in place. This happens every now and then. FYI, I left the console connection active the whole time so I can watch what it's doing or if there is an error, which there was none. I'm unaware if I did something wrong to interrupt this boot process as I didn't even tough the keyboard.
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So you never see the 'Power cycle or reset to reboot' message when halting?
Or it just goes to the prompt after power cycling?
Do you have the console output we can review?
That doesn't sound like anything I've seen before.Steve
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@stephenw10 Oh yes, after I accepted, yes for the selection: 6, to Halt, and the message shows up as "Power cycle or reset to reboot' so I gave it a go ahead and pull plug, to rewire a bit in my cabinet. I go to plug it in, and then the Marvell>> message shows up. There's no more error now after I pulled the plug again for a min and plug it back in. Everything's fine now.
But I am thinking of getting another hardware for the sake of not repeating this weird events.
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Hmm, hard to say what that could have been then. I have occasionally seen similar things if I plug/unplug the console cable during boot. It can send some data that is seen as a character and interrupts the boot.
It's not any known issue though. I wouldn't expect to see that again.Steve
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@stephenw10 Roger that... I am thinking of getting an intel based CPU unit for the pfsense+ 22.01.. I've had nothing but issues with this unit. I may not be 100% geek level on pfsense+ but this should have been simple and follow proper methodologies.
Thank you Steve!!!!