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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 @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.

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        • 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

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            • 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

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                • 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.

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                    • 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?

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                        • 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 😉

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                            • 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.

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                                  • 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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