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    Frequent Crashing (Page Fault) After Upgrade to 2.8.0 From Latest 2.7

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
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    • R Offline
      rfranzke
      last edited by

      Got it!!! Quite a bit larger in size than the others and I can't seem to upload it here due to sizing limit. Somwhere else on here I can upload it?

      So to recap here, just want to speak a bit to my test bed. Using a Cisco 3750 switch as my 'inside' switch carved up into various VLANs to simulate my actual prod setup and to get OSPF routes into the FWs to make sure the routes get populated properly. The inside interfaces of both FWs are in 'VLAN 10'. No tagging is done in the FW configuration. Ports are just using 'switchport access vlan 10' in the switch and no VLANs are configured in the FWs. WAN ports are plugged into just an old Netgear steel case unmanaged switch. Switchports on there are FE for WAN and the LAN ports are gigabit. I don't think any of this matters but did want to include it here in case it does.

      Thanks for looking here and for being patient with this.

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      • stephenw10S Offline
        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
        last edited by

        Aha, nice. Yup I'd expect it to be large. How big is it?

        You can probably upload it here: https://nc.netgate.com/nextcloud/s/3zcPmr5JE694eDn

        Though I think there is a size limit there.

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        • R Offline
          rfranzke @stephenw10
          last edited by

          @stephenw10 Its about 2.6GB. I tried uploading to your link but the thing never sems to complete. I uploaded it to GDrive. Maybe can see it with this link:

          https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ePOeUzoFD911MFNodwCZLY17gZdTpn6k/view?usp=drive_link

          Let me know if that doesn't work. Thanks for looking.

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

            Great I see that. Let's see if it reveals anything...

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • R Offline
              rfranzke @rfranzke
              last edited by rfranzke

              Panic Dump Link

              So today I got this to happen by restarting both FWs and the switch they connect to all at once. I think mostly when this happens its when I fire these up in the AM at which time everything gets started all together. After one of these things panics they seem to be pretty stable. I guess its somewhat rare anymore this happens just randomly throughout the day. Used to but not much anymore. Maybe this is something to do with the switch starting up doing something at startup. Guessing again but if true this might not be seen in my prod environment. But good to know whats going on here. Thanks again for looking.

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

                @rfranzke said in Frequent Crashing (Page Fault) After Upgrade to 2.8.0 From Latest 2.7:

                Panic Dump Link

                That's the same core? The link looks the same.

                R 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • R Offline
                  rfranzke @stephenw10
                  last edited by

                  @stephenw10 Its the same dump. I just made it into an actual link. I couldn't edit original post.

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                  • stephenw10S Offline
                    stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                    last edited by

                    Ok the core dump yielded useful info but not enough to solve it unfortunately.

                    Are you able to load a debug kernel on this and get a core with that running?

                    If so grab the pkg here. Install it. Then:
                    https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/troubleshooting/debug-kernel.html#booting-the-debug-kernel

                    R 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • R Offline
                      rfranzke @stephenw10
                      last edited by

                      @stephenw10 Yes I can install this and run it but not sure the proper way to actually install the pkg file. Enable SSH, copy the file over, and then run it or is there some other method to do this via WebUI?

                      K 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • K Offline
                        kprovost @rfranzke
                        last edited by

                        @rfranzke pkg install -U pfSense-kernel-debug-pfSense-2.8.0.b.20250814.0928.pkg

                        R 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • R Offline
                          rfranzke @kprovost
                          last edited by rfranzke

                          @kprovost So I think I have this loaded. I just enabled SSH on the box, connected to it, and transferred the download debug kernel file. Then ran the installer:

                          [2.8.0-RELEASE][admin@fw2.mdaemon.int]/root: pkg install -y pfSense-kernel-debug-pfSense-2.8.0.b.20250814.0928.pkg
                          Updating pfSense-core repository catalogue...
                          Fetching meta.conf: 0%
                          Fetching data.pkg: 0%
                          pfSense-core repository is up to date.
                          Updating pfSense repository catalogue...
                          Fetching meta.conf: 0%
                          Fetching data.pkg: 0%
                          pfSense repository is up to date.
                          All repositories are up to date.
                          Checking integrity... done (0 conflicting)
                          The following 1 package(s) will be affected (of 0 checked):

                          New packages to be INSTALLED:
                          pfSense-kernel-debug-pfSense: 2.8.0.b.20250814.0928 [unknown-repository]

                          Number of packages to be installed: 1

                          The process will require 254 MiB more space.
                          [1/1] Installing pfSense-kernel-debug-pfSense-2.8.0.b.20250814.0928...
                          Extracting pfSense-kernel-debug-pfSense-2.8.0.b.20250814.0928: 100% 193 B 0.1kB/s 00:02
                          [2.8.0-RELEASE][admin@fw2.mdaemon.int]/root: reboot

                          Then added this to the /boot/loader.conf.local file I created:

                          kernel="kernel.debug"

                          so it boots this kernel all the time. I made the file change before the reboot. Box booted up and I can access it still so assuming its running the debug kernel now. Slick way to tell if its running that new kernel?

                          Edit: Maybe this tells us what we want to know?

                          [2.8.0-RELEASE][admin@fw2.mdaemon.int]/root: uname -a
                          FreeBSD fw2.mdaemon.int 15.0-CURRENT FreeBSD 15.0-CURRENT #1 RELENG_2_8_0-n256082-57273ac5fb19-dirty: Thu Aug 14 09:32:59 CEST 2025 root@nut:/usr/home/kp/netgate/crossbuild-2.8.0/obj/amd64/OdB78hjz/usr/home/kp/netgate/crossbuild-2.8.0/sources/FreeBSD-src-RELENG_2_8_0/amd64.amd64/sys/pfSense-DEBUG amd64
                          [2.8.0-RELEASE][admin@fw2.mdaemon.int]/root:

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                          • K Offline
                            kprovost @rfranzke
                            last edited by

                            @rfranzke said in Frequent Crashing (Page Fault) After Upgrade to 2.8.0 From Latest 2.7:

                            [2.8.0-RELEASE][admin@fw2.mdaemon.int]/root: uname -a
                            FreeBSD fw2.mdaemon.int 15.0-CURRENT FreeBSD 15.0-CURRENT #1 RELENG_2_8_0-n256082-57273ac5fb19-dirty: Thu Aug 14 09:32:59 CEST 2025 root@nut:/usr/home/kp/netgate/crossbuild-2.8.0/obj/amd64/OdB78hjz/usr/home/kp/netgate/crossbuild-2.8.0/sources/FreeBSD-src-RELENG_2_8_0/amd64.amd64/sys/pfSense-DEBUG amd64

                            Yes, that's the kernel we want to be running now.
                            It has one extra assertion on top of the default debug kernel. Hopefully that will give us more clues about why the panic happens.

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                            • R Offline
                              rfranzke
                              last edited by rfranzke

                              So got the box to crash again but no dump file was created at all this time:

                              [2.8.0-RELEASE][admin@fw2.mdaemon.int]/root: cd /var/crash
                              [2.8.0-RELEASE][admin@fw2.mdaemon.int]/var/crash: ls
                              [2.8.0-RELEASE][admin@fw2.mdaemon.int]/var/crash:

                              No file. Any reason this debug version wouldn't create a debug file on panic? Should I have to reconfigure the debug configs as a result of loading the new kernel?

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                              • stephenw10S Offline
                                stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                last edited by

                                Hmm, does sysctl debug.ddb.scripting.scripts still show the modified script?

                                R 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • R Offline
                                  rfranzke @stephenw10
                                  last edited by rfranzke

                                  @stephenw10 I believe so. Here in case I am missing something:

                                  [2.8.0-RELEASE][admin@fw2.mdaemon.int]/root: sysctl debug.ddb.scripting.scripts
                                  debug.ddb.scripting.scripts: lockinfo=show locks; show alllocks; show lockedvnods
                                  pfs=bt ; show registers ; show pcpu ; run lockinfo ; acttrace ; ps ; alltrace
                                  kdb.enter.default=bt ; show registers ; dump ; reset
                                  kdb.enter.witness=run lockinfo

                                  [2.8.0-RELEASE][admin@fw2.mdaemon.int]/root:

                                  I forced a manual panic to test it again and it created a dump file as one would expect, so not sure what happened here:

                                  [2.8.0-RELEASE][admin@fw2.mdaemon.int]/var/crash: ls
                                  bounds info.0 info.last vmcore.0 vmcore.last

                                  Let me know if something is missing from above. Thanks for looking.

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                                  • stephenw10S Offline
                                    stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                    last edited by

                                    Huh that's odd. Did it actually panic before with the arp crash? Did it reboot automatically afterwards?

                                    Might need a new script line there if it's doing some special. In which case we might need wisdom from @kprovost 😉

                                    K R 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                    • K Offline
                                      kprovost @stephenw10
                                      last edited by

                                      @stephenw10 Off the top of my head I don't know of any reason why a panic wouldn't leave a core dump.

                                      What makes you say the box crashed if there's no core dump? Did it reboot? Is there anything in the logs?

                                      If it did crash it really should have left a core dump. The only thing that I can think of that might (and I stress might, I've not confirmed this) cause it to not produce a core dump is if the dump area is too small. How much memory does the machine have, and how big is the swap?

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                                      • R Offline
                                        rfranzke @stephenw10
                                        last edited by rfranzke

                                        @stephenw10 I heard the fans spin up like it does and checked if I could access the device on the network. I couldn't so it definitely seemed to crash. Trying to get this to crash on its own now. The box definitely restarted for some reason. I assumed it was due to the same crash that I've been chasing. I suppose its possible that it just restarted for some reason, but I would say fairly unlikely that would be the case. Plenty of swap space available:

                                        [2.8.0-RELEASE][admin@fw2.mdaemon.int]/root: swapinfo -h
                                        Device Size Used Avail Capacity
                                        /dev/gpt/swap1 128G 0B 128G 0%
                                        [2.8.0-RELEASE][admin@fw2.mdaemon.int]/root:

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                                        • stephenw10S Offline
                                          stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                          last edited by

                                          Hmm. I guess try and trigger it again and see if you can confirm it.

                                          N 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                          • N Offline
                                            netblues @stephenw10
                                            last edited by

                                            At that point it might prove helpful to configure a serial console output and hook up the serial port to another pc running some terminal software with a big scroll back buffer.
                                            It might give more insight than fans spinning at boot.

                                            p.s. Strange as it is, I do suspect power issues, its a good way to crash a system without leaving ANY traces apart from the new boot logs.

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