Uptime
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I'm just wondering if there is a recommended amount of uptime before restarting a PfSense system. As it stands now i've my my full change over to having PfSense do all my routing and i'm loving it. My old router has been turned into an access point and i've set it up to have a restart schedule of once a week at 3am.
Is there any real reason to restart the pfsense system if i've made no changes and im not having any issues with connections or anything else? Is there an advantage to restarting it once a month, and if so can I set it up with an auto scheduler to restart at 3 am on its own?
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@tunnlrat Really the only time you should have to restart pfsense is when you upgrade it to new version. So my next reboot will be when 22.05 comes out and I upgrade to it ;)
Other than that - maybe if you change some of the hardware, add a nic or something for example. Or you have a power outage that exceeds your ups runtime..
Other than that - there really should be no need to reboot it.
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None that I'm aware of. PfSense runs on FreeBSD, which doesn't have the sort of issues that Windows has, which require rebooting to "fix".
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The only reason to do rare powerdowns and restarts is to check for hardware (and especially) boot errors
It isn't pfsense specific, its applicable to all mission critical devices.But this shouldn't be done automatically by a scheduler.
Equipped with a configuration backup, console access and plenty of planned maintenance time (and why not, alternative hardware) it should be done manually.Lets say once every 6 months or so.
Most probably, if you don't plan for it, a power outage will do it for you too. :) -
I'm just wondering if there is a recommended amount of uptime before restarting a PfSense system.
Depends mostly on the state of the fans of the air coolers, and the quantity of dust in the environment. It's far easier to clean them with the system down.
Battery maintenance also implies a shut down.
Unauthorized persons ripping out cables is also a known shut down reason.
Just to mention some.
edit @netblues is right : just to make sure it can reboot fine all by itself is an important reason to reboot it yourself and check ( console !! the GUI hides all the joy ) if all goes well.
Presuming is a thing, knowing is far better. -
Awesome! I don't think I will be doing any hardware changes to the machine as its an 2014 HP desktop. I'm coming from using Asus routers which eventually seem to get bogged down with to much network traffic giving me spotty connection after a certain amount of time. I never used to have this issue but as connection speeds have increased and the last 2 garbage modems that were also routers from my ISP it has just become routine to almost need to restart everything once a month.
I moved to bridge modem and now just using my Asus gaming router as just an AP. pfSense has made a huge difference and I'm only using it as a home network router. 3 desktops that are almost always gaming all at the same (wired in btw) and an Amazon fire stick that's usually streaming netflix or prime and a dedicated valheim server. Plus a smattering of phones etc all on wifi.
When the new versions are released are they usually just bug fixes or are there security fixes added in where its a good idea to keep pfSense upto date always?
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I suspect the higher speeds are overwhelming a lot of older gear. I used to run pfSense on an old HP compact desktop PC. When I moved to my new firewall computer (see sig), I got a significant boost with my 500/20 connection.
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good idea to keep pfSense upto date always?
Yeah its a good idea to keep up to date.. While you sure do not need to update the minute a new version comes out..
They quite often contain all kinds of good stuff, bug fixes, new features and yeah security related stuff..
I have a couple of boxes running old code, and it is killing me - but with covid, have not been able to get time to do it while someone will be on site for the update - just in case..
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A remote production site still running fine:
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@psp nice showing how stable something is, but not good for being behind in updates ;)
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@johnpoz
Fully agreed! -
28 Days 22 Hours 38 Minutes 45 Seconds
Freaking power company had a planned outage that was scheduled for like 4 hours, which is well beyond what my ups can handle, so had to do a shutdown :(
It only ended up being like 2 hours, maybe could of made it through - but didn't want risk a hard down.. But yeah that killed my uptime, before it was since updated to 22.05 when it came out.
