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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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    • 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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