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    pfSense 2.7.2 in Hyper-V freezing with no crash report after reboot

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Virtualization
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    • BismarckB
      Bismarck @maitops
      last edited by Bismarck

      @maitops Running pfSense 2.7.2 (FBSD 14) with HAProxy as the only VM. Load wasn't high during the events, even occurring once at 3 AM with zero HAProxy load. The issue may not be HAProxy itself, but a kernel resource over time exhaustion?

      I also have another router configured as a CARP secondary with the same configuration. If the primary goes down, the secondary experiences the same issue.

      I found this sentence very interesting. Why is that? Maybe that's a starting point?

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      • M
        maitops @Bismarck
        last edited by maitops

        @Bismarck I will provide more context.

        I made a cron script that detect if the hvevent issue is triggering and force the router to enter in a CARP maintenance mode. So the secondary is suppose to take the lead when the hvevent occurs. Once the cron worked at 3am, at 6am the second router triggered the hvevent issue too. So the 2nd router probably didn't had an exhaustion over time, it didn't took a lot of traffic during 3h in the night.

        Btw the CARP maintenance mode can fail to release some VIP when the hvevent issue occurs. I trigger the CARP Maintenance mode with the web API of the OpnSense (probably work the same on Pfsense).

        The VMs are not run on the same host, but all hosts are hyper-v windows server 2022 on AMD EPYC Genoa CPU.

        BismarckB 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • BismarckB
          Bismarck @maitops
          last edited by

          @maitops Thanks for the detailed explanation.

          No hvevent storm here for 6 days and 23.5 hours since my last update, but it probably needs at least 20 and more days to be significant.

          Theory: Server 2022 Hyper-V power management, network driver changes may be incompatible with some FreeBSD kernel components, causing issues under certain conditions. Windows and Debian guests in Hyper-V Manager display more detailed information (e.g., RAM usage) than FreeBSD 14 guests. Interesting that the MS Hyper-V FreeBSD Guest compability list only goes to 13 and 2019, where pfSense runs just fine.

          J M stephenw10S 3 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • J
            jacolex @Bismarck
            last edited by jacolex

            Hello, I'm struggling with simmilar case. pfSense with 6 interfaces, hosts suddenly lost connection from/to pfsense gateway, which means distruption of web services. It happens once a month, but last week it happened 3 times. Only restart can help. Today I swiched to UFS. If it not resolves the issue, I'll try with disabling pfblocker for achieve minimal resources consuming. I wonder whether pfsense 2.8.0 on FreeBSD 15 would be more stable or worse.

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            • M
              maitops @Bismarck
              last edited by

              @Bismarck Hi,

              The system is still running fine ?

              BismarckB J 3 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • BismarckB
                Bismarck @maitops
                last edited by

                @maitops

                Yes, no problems so far.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • J
                  jacolex @maitops
                  last edited by jacolex

                  @maitops yes, since 10 days. I also disabled hn ALTQ support (no clue if it's necessary). Observing kernel hvevents, no issues. But I have to wait 2-3 months to say, that it's stable.

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                  • J
                    jacolex @maitops
                    last edited by

                    @maitops unfortunately, today morning we encountered network outages and the firewall needs to be restarted.

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

                      @Bismarck said in pfSense 2.7.2 in Hyper-V freezing with no crash report after reboot:

                      No hvevent storm here for 6 days and 23.5 hours since my last update,

                      So this was setting the power management to 'high power' in Hyper-V? Which presumably disables throttling down the VM in some way.

                      BismarckB 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • BismarckB
                        Bismarck @stephenw10
                        last edited by

                        @stephenw10

                        Yes, or just disabling the power management/green feature of the Nic should be enough, this is how it is right now on my Hyper-V host. There was a message (no error) in the Windows event logs about switching states or so, while the hvevent storm.

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                        • M
                          maitops @Bismarck
                          last edited by maitops

                          This post is deleted!
                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • BismarckB
                            Bismarck
                            last edited by Bismarck

                            Quick update:

                            c941ae86-6ebb-40bb-a5e5-7ce0c05a60ce-image.png

                            Had to reboot once because auf updates, but since than rock solid no incidence. Enabled all extra IP-Lists and Suricata and so again.

                            @maitops Just disable all energy saving features of the nic or select high performance power profile in windows for a test.

                            It must be the power state switching or the system tunables I did im my last update post.

                            M 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                            • M
                              maitops @Bismarck
                              last edited by

                              @Bismarck I still have the issue, I have a mellanox connectx-6 Lx NIC, I just disabled the "Interupt Moderation" too

                              BismarckB 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • BismarckB
                                Bismarck @maitops
                                last edited by

                                @maitops

                                I have a Intel 82599 and X550-AT2 in use.

                                1920876d-a2ae-46f6-97dc-38f66a5371b3-image.png

                                Did you try the loader.conf.local and system tunables from the screenshot?

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                                • M
                                  maitops @Bismarck
                                  last edited by

                                  @Bismarck Yes, iI changed the loader.conf and rebooted.
                                  the tunable, not everything, only:

                                  hw.hvtimesync.sample_thresh
                                  hw.hvtimesync.ignore_sync

                                  i can try to set all the others too

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

                                    You should set custom loader values in /boot/loader.conf.local (create that file) to prevent them being overwritten by the system.

                                    M 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                    • S
                                      shoulders
                                      last edited by

                                      is this the same underlying issue as

                                      https://forum.netgate.com/topic/197248/pfsense-2-7-2-ram-leak-wired-memory-pool/11

                                      might be irrelevant it is on a hypervisor.

                                      solution looks like it might to update to pfsense 2.8.0

                                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                      • M
                                        maitops @stephenw10
                                        last edited by

                                        @stephenw10 My bad, i'm trying with this.
                                        I will tell you if it solved my issue.

                                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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