Netgate Discussion Forum
    • Categories
    • Recent
    • Tags
    • Popular
    • Users
    • Search
    • Register
    • Login

    Pfsense system crash

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
    24 Posts 4 Posters 3.0k Views 4 Watching
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as topic
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it.
    • stephenw10S Offline
      stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
      last edited by

      So it just appears to lock up? No response at the console? Even to Ctl+t ?

      And there is no crash report shown when it reboots?

      V 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • V Offline
        vcr58 @stephenw10
        last edited by

        @stephenw10 said in Pfsense system crash:

        That's a good test. You should be able to see a memory leak in ntop-ng in the top output though.

        It could also be ntop struggling due to traffic from some other issue.

        Steve

        With ntop-ng disabled I have not had any issues so far. A YT video I watched recommended that ntop-ng not be running all the time anyway since it is somewhat of of resource hog.

        Thanks.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • V Offline
          vcr58 @stephenw10
          last edited by

          @stephenw10 I have been running pfsense now for 22 days but just now am not being served any ip addresses and cannot log in. My cable modem says everything is fine so it's pfsense not running. CTL+t does respond with

           "load: 0.00 cmd: login 53946 [tx->tx_sync_done_cv] 1881545.20r 0.00u 0.00s 0% 2708k"
          

          Anything else I should do? I know a reboot will fix it for a while.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • V Offline
            vcr58
            last edited by

            Here is a pic of the monitor connected and the output before the crash.
            20220509_190455-2.jpg

            keyserK 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • keyserK Offline
              keyser Rebel Alliance @vcr58
              last edited by

              @vcr58 said in Pfsense system crash:

              Here is a pic of the monitor connected and the output before the crash.
              20220509_190455-2.jpg

              Your issue is related to write-io to the system disk. It seems your disk goes missing/not responding. This also supports why you get better stability without NtopNG as that package in particular does A LOT of write I/O.

              Strange that it only happens with ZFS and not UFS. But ZFS uses a very different write strategy, and is a quite write intense in bursts opposed to UFS. So it would seem your SSD/eMMC/HDD is the culprit. Please remember that especially eMMC and NTopNG is not a good match as the write endurance could be worn out in a matter of a year or two.

              Love the no fuss of using the official appliances :-)

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • stephenw10S Offline
                stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                last edited by

                Mmm, that looks like a bad/failing disk. It should never stop responding like that.

                I would replace it and restest when you can.

                Steve

                V 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • V Offline
                  vcr58 @stephenw10
                  last edited by

                  @stephenw10 - I suppose it could be the SSD going bad although I never get any errors when running a scan on it. What @keyser said does make sense to me as well.

                  I do have an older WD SSD green that I could try so I will try that one and see what happens.

                  Thanks

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • stephenw10S Offline
                    stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                    last edited by

                    I have an SSD here that continually throws CAM errors like that when pfSense is running from it. It has never actually failed during use but there's no way I would use it in any sort of critical role. It has failed to install before and I consider it dead.

                    Steve

                    V 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • V Offline
                      vcr58 @stephenw10
                      last edited by

                      @stephenw10 I have the same pfsense setup on a different SSD now. It is probably a better drive even though it's older (I think).

                      When the first drive stopped working the only log that showed CAM errors was on the monitor connected to the pfsense PC. After reboot I could not find the same info in pfsense logs anywhere. Would CAM errors show up in "Status/System Logs/System/General" in the web gui if the system was still running?

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • stephenw10S Offline
                        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                        last edited by

                        It's common to see drive errors like that on the console only because often logs cannot be written by that point.

                        V 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                        • V Offline
                          vcr58 @stephenw10
                          last edited by

                          @stephenw10 After replacing the SSD I have not seen any errors after 4 days of uptime, even with ntopng running, so problem was indeed the bad SSD.

                          Thank you so much for your help in troubleshooting my issue!

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                          • V vcr58 referenced this topic on
                          • First post
                            Last post
                          Copyright 2025 Rubicon Communications LLC (Netgate). All rights reserved.