Wan periodic reset causes system reboot.

RobbieTT

Still covered by this on redmine:

No improvement yet on 23.09 dev and the issue is (probably) being pushed to 24.03, so another 6 months+ away.

It's not ideal, I know. I'm looking for a non-pfSense option in the interim to cover the periods when I may not be around to resolve these crashes & reboots.

In the meantime I've been pushing data at the Netgate team and running stuff whenever needed and trying every development load.

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AlexanderK

anything on beta 23.09?

RobbieTT

@AlexanderK @stephenw10

No, nothing substantive. Netgate did ask me to produce results with a modified kernel but the moving set of instructions left me in a bit of a hole with a router that should have been in production.

I am building-up a new server with pfSense+ so I can test with more freedom but my testing hours with a live WAN are limited. I could do with more help really.

It would really help if Netgate provided a complete version to test with, rather than being left to modify stuff myself in order to provide data for them. They expect quite a bit from a paying customer (although I acknowledge this would be different if they could replicate the issue on their own dev systems).

Anyway, I remain committed and will still invest the time needed where I can.

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stephenw10

Yes, I'm sorry about that. Not being able to replicate it ourselves makes everything much more difficult. It's especially annoying here because I have essentially an identical setup to you. The only significant difference is the connection speed.

We are working to add a coredump implementation in the gui to make this process much easier.

In the mean time I'd be happy to work with you here if you're able to.

If you're able to I would simply reinstall with a much larger SWAP size to avoid the need for an external drive with SWAP.

Also one thing I didn't realise until I tested it was that changes to the pfSnse-ddb.conf file are read in a boot so the system needs to be rebooted normally to apply them before the panic is triggered.

Steve

RobbieTT

@stephenw10

Clearly I am happy to work with you Steve.

I just looked at the swap in the GUI dashboard, only to find there isn't one showing on my Supermicro system. Did I miss a step or something?

[23.05.1-RELEASE][admin@Router-7.redacted.me]/root: swapinfo -h
Device              Size     Used    Avail Capacity

/root: top

last pid: 76190;  load averages:  0.14,  0.12,  0.09                      up 0+02:00:50  18:24:55
67 processes:  1 running, 66 sleeping
CPU:  0.2% user,  0.0% nice,  0.1% system,  0.1% interrupt, 99.6% idle
Mem: 139M Active, 391M Inact, 870M Wired, 56K Buf, 29G Free
ARC: 223M Total, 39M MFU, 177M MRU, 622K Anon, 1091K Header, 5669K Other
     164M Compressed, 419M Uncompressed, 2.56:1 Ratio

  PID USERNAME    THR PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE    C   TIME    WCPU COMMAND
34097 unbound      16  20    0   425M   316M kqread   3   0:51   3.03% unbound
36766 root          1  20    0    14M  3856K CPU6     6   0:00   0.21% top

I don't recall setting a swap on my Netgate 6100 or on this machine. The 6100 shows a swap of 1024 MiB - never seen it used though.

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stephenw10

Mmm, yes by default the Plus installer sets 1G for swap. The CE installer at one time used half the RAM size by default if there was sufficient drive space. I'm not sure why yours you have none.

A 6100 here dumps ~750MB from the kernel when configured to do so but that's after running only a short time. If you can trigger this quickly on the 6100 it would be worth trying since the worst case is that it just fails to hold the dump and reboots. If you're not using the 6100 you can reinstall it and add more SWAP, I would expect 2GB to be more than enough.

Steve

RobbieTT

@stephenw10
Under gpart I can see 1.0G of freebsd-swap - is the value used by pfSense?

[23.05.1-RELEASE][admin@Router-7.redacted.me]/root: gpart show
=>       40  231270320  nvd0  GPT  (110G)
         40     532480     1  efi  (260M)
     532520       1024     2  freebsd-boot  (512K)
     533544        984        - free -  (492K)
     534528    2097152     3  freebsd-swap  (1.0G)
    2631680  228636672     4  freebsd-zfs  (109G)
  231268352       2008        - free -  (1.0M)

[23.05.1-RELEASE][admin@Router-7.redacted.me]/root:

It's still a bit odd for it to be missing from the GUI though.

I'm happy to use either the Netgate 6100 or the Supermicro (SYS-510D-8C-FN6P) for testing; so your choice with repeatability vs flexibility.

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Gertjan

@RobbieTT said in Wan periodic reset causes system reboot.:

I can see 1.0G of freebsd-swap - is the value used by pfSense?

See/etc/fstab

[23.05.1-RELEASE][root@pfSense.bhf.net]/root: cat /etc/fstab
# Device                Mountpoint      FStype  Options         Dump    Pass#
/dev/gpt/efiboot0               /boot/efi       msdosfs rw              0       0
/dev/nvd0p3             none    swap    sw       0       0

When I got my 4100 (with pfSense 22.05 from back then ?), the swap line wasn't using "/dev/nvd0p3" but something else. The result : there was a swap partition but pfSense wasn't using it.
"nvd0p3" is my swap partition. I had to change that by editing /etc/fstab.
IFAIK : it was mentioning some disk ID, not the partition device name.

If your system starts to use the swap, consider removing stuff, typically, when you use pfBlockerng, use less bigger DNS files ;)

RobbieTT

@Gertjan
I think that is my question, given the gpart above, should /etc/fstab be changed from /dev/nvd1p3 to /dev/nvd0p3?

My presumption is that pfSense uses the freebsd-swap shown in gpart but I am not certain or know why the install points to the wrong location.

I don't think I am close to needing swap due to lack of RAM though:

2023-10-16 at 09.17.00.png

This swap discussion is for kernel dumps, not day-to-day use.

[edit:] Changing to nvd0p3 and rebooting did indeed bring the GUI swap graph back:

2023-10-16 at 12.51.47.png

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stephenw10

Nice. Also interesting.

Ok so set the line in /etc/pSense-ddb.conf. I used:

script kdb.enter.default=capture on; bt; show registers; show pcpu; capture off; dump; reset

Then reboot to apply that.

I then tested it by running sysctl debug.kdb.panic=1 which immediately panics the box and runs the script. At the console you see:

panic: kdb_sysctl_panic
cpuid = 3
time = 1697460855
KDB: enter: panic
[ thread pid 1455 tid 100508 ]
Stopped at      kdb_enter+0x32: movq    $0,0x2344f43(%rip)
db:0:kdb.enter.default> capture on
db:0:kdb.enter.default>  bt
Tracing pid 1455 tid 100508 td 0xfffffe00b7ceaac0
kdb_enter() at kdb_enter+0x32/frame 0xfffffe00b13afa10
vpanic() at vpanic+0x163/frame 0xfffffe00b13afb40
panic() at panic+0x43/frame 0xfffffe00b13afba0
kdb_sysctl_panic() at kdb_sysctl_panic+0x61/frame 0xfffffe00b13afbd0
sysctl_root_handler_locked() at sysctl_root_handler_locked+0x90/frame 0xfffffe00b13afc20
sysctl_root() at sysctl_root+0x216/frame 0xfffffe00b13afca0
userland_sysctl() at userland_sysctl+0x176/frame 0xfffffe00b13afd50
sys___sysctl() at sys___sysctl+0x5c/frame 0xfffffe00b13afe00
amd64_syscall() at amd64_syscall+0x109/frame 0xfffffe00b13aff30
fast_syscall_common() at fast_syscall_common+0xf8/frame 0xfffffe00b13aff30
--- syscall (202, FreeBSD ELF64, __sysctl), rip = 0xb03aaf1e18a, rsp = 0xb03a86d9c88, rbp = 0xb03a86d9cc0 ---
db:0:kdb.enter.default>  show registers
cs                        0x20
ds                        0x3b
es                        0x3b
fs                        0x13
gs                        0x1b
ss                        0x28
rax                       0x12
rcx         0xffffffff814589e2
rdx                      0x3f8
rbx                      0x100
rsp         0xfffffe00b13afa10
rbp         0xfffffe00b13afa10
rsi                 0xc3b4cdc4
rdi                        0x4
r8                0x7ac3b4cdc4
r9          0xfffffe00b7ceaac0
r10         0xfffffe00b13af8f0
r11         0xcedfc2df9afff59c
r12                          0
r13                          0
r14         0xffffffff814b6685
r15         0xfffffe00b7ceaac0
rip         0xffffffff80d388c2  kdb_enter+0x32
rflags                    0x86
kdb_enter+0x32: movq    $0,0x2344f43(%rip)
db:0:kdb.enter.default>  show pcpu
cpuid        = 3
dynamic pcpu = 0xfffffe008efd7f00
curthread    = 0xfffffe00b7ceaac0: pid 1455 tid 100508 critnest 1 "sysctl"
curpcb       = 0xfffffe00b7ceafe0
fpcurthread  = 0xfffffe00b7ceaac0: pid 1455 "sysctl"
idlethread   = 0xfffffe0011fbde40: tid 100006 "idle: cpu3"
self         = 0xffffffff84013000
curpmap      = 0xfffff8012468fd38
tssp         = 0xffffffff84013384
rsp0         = 0xfffffe00b13b0000
kcr3         = 0xffffffffffffffff
ucr3         = 0xffffffffffffffff
scr3         = 0x0
gs32p        = 0xffffffff84013404
ldt          = 0xffffffff84013444
tss          = 0xffffffff84013434
curvnet      = 0xfffff80001203980
db:0:kdb.enter.default>  capture off
db:0:kdb.enter.default>  dump
Dumping 702 out of 8050 MB:..3%..12%..21%..32%..42%..51%..62%..71%..83%..92%
Dump complete
db:0:kdb.enter.default>  reset
Uptime: 3m30s

After rebooting you should see the crash report in the gui with the vmcore offered to download.

If that's all working then delete that core and try to panic it by removing the interface again. Hopefully the core is not bigger than 1G if you can trigger it soon enough after boot.

Steve

RobbieTT

@stephenw10
Thanks Steve - as the issue is intermittent for me I probably need more swap.

Can I just boot from the USB installer and manually tweak the existing partitions using gpart delete / resize and whatever ZFS uses for regrow?

(It's been a long time since I have used partition commands but probably not much has changed over a couple of decades... other than my memory...)

Hmm, may be easier to get a new install USB but does it offer an option to set the swap partition size during the install (ie I don't remember one)?

️

stephenw10

Yes, you can just set the size during the install:

Screenshot from 2023-10-16 14-33-55.png

RobbieTT

@stephenw10
Ok, even my phat fingers can cope with that.

Now all I need is some WAN time to myself.

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RobbieTT

I've racked-up the Supermicro and it has taken-over for pfSense duties, leaving the Netgate 6100 free for testing. What could possibly go wrong?

IMG_2387 copy.jpeg

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stephenw10

So bluuuuuue!

RobbieTT

@stephenw10

It's a Monday night, rack mood lights to blue.

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RobbieTT

@stephenw10

Reinstalled everything on the 6100 and presuming you guys are running more 23.09d than anything else, I pushed it on to the latest dev load. I'll run 23.05.1 on the other device for now, so much swapping around today. Probably missed something along the way.

Anyway, partitioned for a 4 GB Swap - hopefully that will be spacious enough for you:

2023-10-20 at 17.14.08.png

[23.09-BETA]/root: gpart show
=>       40  115189680  nda0  GPT  (55G)
         40     532480     1  efi  (260M)
     532520       1024     2  freebsd-boot  (512K)
     533544        984        - free -  (492K)
     534528    8388608     3  freebsd-swap  (4.0G)
    8923136  106264576     4  freebsd-zfs  (51G)
  115187712       2008        - free -  (1.0M)

[23.09-BETA]/root:

I should get some quiet WAN time tomorrow to do interface testing and hopefully achieve a kernel dump. No doubt it will be more intermittent than usual, just to be difficult.

I'll remember to run your script too:

script kdb.enter.default=capture on; bt; show registers; show pcpu; capture off; dump; reset

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stephenw10

Excellent, that looks good. Let's hope it reveals some useful data. Thanks.

stephenw10

You can try manually triggering a panic to make sure it catches a coredump. Run: sysctl debug.kdb.panic=1

RobbieTT

@stephenw10
Sorry Steve, this proved to be beyond me. I guess I will have to wait for the GUI button to be implemented or for a genuine idiot proof step-by-step guide to be written as this has eaten through way too many hours over too many days.

I think I hit the assumed-knowledge barrier too often, with steps given, only to be belatedly added to with instructions like 'using console mode' or 'use kernel debug mode option 6' or 'did you edit some .conf file' or 'follow 'x' thread' or 'install 'x' package but only by method 'y'.

So what did work:

got console working from macOS (mislabeled as GNU screen in pfSense docs)
got the swap partition size changed via console
fresh install
installed pfSense-kernel-debug-pfSense pkg from the GUI command line
ran kdb.enter.default=capture on; (etc) script from regular CLI
reboots (many)
kdb.enter.default=capture shown under /root
reboot into kernel debug mode via console (option 6 etc)
trigger panic via CLI using sysctl debug.kdb.panic=1
console scrolls through something that looks like a core dump...
crash report in /var/crash with info and text dump files
no core dump offered in the GUI
no core dump file found in /var/crash

Clearly I am typing with a little frustration (sorry about that) but perhaps you can spot something useful in the above.

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