Regaining Access to pfSense?

MichaelCropper

Long story short.....

Original Setup
Modem --> SG-3100 --> UniFi Managed Switch --> Bare Metal

Situation
Had everything setup nicely for a home lab, then moved house. So just coming to re-plug everything back in.

With one slight challenge..... I'm pretty sure (from memory) that the Management Interface VLAN for accessing the Web GUI that was setup was configured to a laptop that has since died, completely died.

So I think that what is happening is that I'm essentially locked out of the management interface to manage pfSense.

Debugging To Date
When pfSense is plugged into new computer via ethernet, the computer successfully gets an IP Address from pfSense, and I can successfully ping pfSense from the computer.

Yet I can't access the Web GUI at https://192.168.1.1 via the web browser. It just times out before even loading the login screen.

Lights are flashing green on ethernet ports on both the computer and pfSense.

I've successfully connected to the command line console via serial port using PuTTy but I don't see anything particularly useful to help regain access.

I'd really like to avoid having to do a factory reset as it's going to be a downstream pain to to rebuild everything.

Next Steps?
Answers on a postcard while I'm busy Googling / ChatGPTing.....

stephenw10

Do you get to the login screen at the webui but never reach the dashboard? That would imply a php issue.

If you never see a login at all it's probably a firewall issue. In which case you can disable the firewall temporarily with: pfctl -d
See: https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/troubleshooting/locked-out.html#disable-the-firewall

MichaelCropper

@stephenw10 Thanks for that link. I've gone through every single step on there to try and get back in and nothing was working.....

..... Then when I was checking the file for manually reviewing the firewall rules to see if I could spot something;

/tmp/rules.debug

I noticed that I had changed the Web GUI Port from the default 443 --> Another Port for added security, which I had since forgot about, and my current self is cursing my past self for not documenting that fact.

Anyhow, all back into the Web GUI now so I can start to have a play around again. Thanks for the help

stephenw10

Aha, that would do it.

For future reference you can check the listening port in use from the command line using sockstat like:

[25.07.1-RELEASE][root@plusdev-4.stevew.lan]/root: sockstat -l4
USER     COMMAND    PID   FD  PROTO  LOCAL ADDRESS         FOREIGN ADDRESS      
root     php-fpm    82769 4   udp4   *:*                   *:*
root     php-fpm    36135 4   udp4   *:*                   *:*
root     php-fpm    80700 4   udp4   *:*                   *:*
root     php-fpm    26020 4   udp4   *:*                   *:*
root     syslogd    49551 10  udp4   *:514                 *:*
dhcpd    dhcpd      50432 9   udp4   *:67                  *:*
root     nginx      37810 5   tcp4   *:443                 *:*
root     nginx      37810 7   tcp4   *:80                  *:*
root     nginx      37559 5   tcp4   *:443                 *:*
root     nginx      37559 7   tcp4   *:80                  *:*
root     nginx      37376 5   tcp4   *:443                 *:*
root     nginx      37376 7   tcp4   *:80                  *:*
root     ntpd       29525 21  udp4   *:123                 *:*
root     ntpd       29525 23  udp4   192.168.184.1:123     *:*
root     ntpd       29525 25  udp4   172.21.16.184:123     *:*
root     ntpd       29525 28  udp4   127.0.0.1:123         *:*
unbound  unbound    91092 5   udp4   *:53                  *:*
unbound  unbound    91092 6   tcp4   *:53                  *:*
unbound  unbound    91092 7   tcp4   127.0.0.1:953         *:*
root     sshd        2721 4   tcp4   *:22                  *:*
root     php-fpm      606 4   udp4   *:*                   *:*
root     php-fpm      605 4   udp4   *:*                   *:*
root     php-fpm      603 4   udp4   *:*                   *:*

MichaelCropper

@stephenw10 That's a handy command, good to know