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    Activity light flashes every 2 seconds or so on my switches

    Problems Installing or Upgrading pfSense Software
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    • J
      Jesse7
      last edited by

      Quick easy question (I hope).  I have several switches around my house so there is a switch in most rooms.  Since installing PFsense all my switches activity lights will flash every two seconds anywhere a network cable is connected.  Even if No Pc is turned on ( I think).

      I did a search of the faq and mailing lists but didn't find anything.

      It's not really bothering me I am just curious as to what setting is causing this and why it is doing it.

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      • W
        whetu
        last edited by

        get ethereal on one of your computers and let it packet sniff for a while, then see if you can come up with some correlation.  It's probably just broadcast traffic :)

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        • D
          DamienD
          last edited by

          Hello,

          I noticed this too…

          I wonder what it is...

          I might play a bit with etereal ;-)

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          • J
            Jesse7
            last edited by

            Cool,  not the only person then.  I haven't had a chance to play with ethereal yet had other problems I havn't been able to solve yet.  Let me know if you find anything, I will try have a play tonight.

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            • J
              Jesse7
              last edited by

              I did a fresh install of .94 and it seems to have stopped whatever activity was causing this.  The only option I can think of was some option that could make finding otherpeople on my lan almost instant rather than a few seconds wait.  I can't remember the name of the option and didn't find it again "yet" I will have another look for it tonight, and see if it is enabled.

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              • P
                Phobia
                last edited by

                Hi there,

                Did you ever figure out the problem?  My switch lights are also flashing every second or two.

                Let us know… thanks!

                -- Phob

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                • H
                  hoba
                  last edited by

                  Any chance you have CARP configured? With CARP the machines are sending out "Hey, I'm still alive" broadcasts so other clustermembers know about the availablility.

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                  • P
                    Phobia
                    last edited by

                    Its not PFSense on my network … I also have a Linksys WRT54GS which is flashed with a 3rd party firmware called DDWRT and used as a wireless access point.

                    It turns out that my 2 second flashes are caused by something called STP or Spanning Tree Prototcal.  The fix for me was easy, I just disabled STP on my WRT54GS and voila, no more flashes.

                    I should say, Ethereal was key to locating the issue... I had never seen a STP packet before... interesting! :)

                    Thanks all!

                    -- Phob

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                    • H
                      hoba
                      last edited by

                      pfSense supports STP as well if used with bridgeconfiguration. Somebody of you are using it as Bridge?

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                      • J
                        Jesse7
                        last edited by

                        @hoba:

                        Any chance you have CARP configured? With CARP the machines are sending out "Hey, I'm still alive" broadcasts so other clustermembers know about the availablility.

                        I don't think I had CARP enabled perhaps I did or had an option like that enabled.  Is carp enabled by default?  When I went to the page that allows you to configure carp nothing is ticked, but when I go to carp status it shows three nodes and there is a button "disable CARP"  no other info.

                        And yeh I don't have the 2 second blinking anymore.

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                        • S
                          sullrich
                          last edited by

                          @Jesse7:

                          @hoba:

                          Any chance you have CARP configured? With CARP the machines are sending out "Hey, I'm still alive" broadcasts so other clustermembers know about the availablility.

                          I don't think I had CARP enabled perhaps I did or had an option like that enabled.  Is carp enabled by default?  When I went to the page that allows you to configure carp nothing is ticked, but when I go to carp status it shows three nodes and there is a button "disable CARP"  no other info.

                          And yeh I don't have the 2 second blinking anymore.

                          CARP ip's are added under Virtual IP's.  They WILL make your switch port blink every second, its a heartbeat.

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