PfSense w/ DHCP has brought down our network twice
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It's hardware that is several years old. Because of budget at the time and because pfSense said it didn't require fancy new hardware, we just threw together something with what we had.
Is there any definitive way to determine if it was simply a hardware freeze? Any thing in logs or anything at all that could help?
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i'd be curious if here's a log for tracking hardware lock up's as well…..
i'm in the same boat, been using pfsense for 13 months now, had to reboot it once, and then another time i had to reset to factory defaults just out of the blue.
make sure you have all the settings backed up, as i didn't the first time and i was kicking myself.
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If the keyboard is non-responsive then it can only be one of 2 things - a kernel crash (highly unlikely) or a hardware problem (almost certainly). The usual things to do include checking cooling (open the case, check that the fans work and that the case isn't clogged with dust), that the RAM is ok (run memtest86).
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jakobud,
You cant really blame pfSense when the hardware has 'hardlocked'. NO OS can function when the hardware is frozen solid.. I know this gets frustrating very quick,when you come into the work spot and everyone is crying the blues,,,"No net access".
We have been using pfSense-1.2.3-RELEASE for not quite a year and have never had to restart any one of the three pfSense machines on account of hardware lockups. This is with a 1,000 user base. Not sure what an average concurrent user number would be. All three are different hardware configurations but mostly 7-8 year old 1u server boxes.
A starting point is to do an 'dmesg' and see if anything here looks wonky such as maybe cpu throttling,possibly due to cooling problems or something similar.
An easy thing to eliminate in this picture is system memory. Boot up off of about any linux boot disk,and type in 'memtest' to check the system memory. If the memory is bad you will see red blocks,which makes bad stuff obvious.
You didn't mention if you are using pfSense version #.#.#.
Why don't you post what hardware config you are using on this machine. AKA: IDE drives,memory,cpu,nics etc.Take Care,
BarryTake Care,
Barry -
Another lockup this-morning (or this weekend sometime rather). So its happening more often now. The fans and everything are working fine on the machine. I'll get back to you soon with some spec's and memtest results.
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A defective keyboard could theoretically generate spurious keystrokes that could eventually bring down a computer.
Have you tried a different, known-good keyboard? Have you tried the same keyboard on a different, known-good PC?
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If you are still encountering the hard freezes, I'd say it's time to take a backup and restore to another machine. See if your problems stop and go from there. The whole process won't take much longer than a reboot.
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It (still) sounds like failing hardware, particularly if it's happening faster and faster. Have you tried running any hardware diagnostics yet?
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Have not been able to do hardware testing yet. The entire network is basically offline while the pfsense machine is offline so we have not had the chance to do this yet. It's like trying to change the tire on a moving car :-(
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jakobud,
get to work early in the am,,get a bootable cd with memtest86 on it.
1. boot the (linux)cd and at command prompt type in memtest
let it run for a couple hours.
,,,if this results "OK"(no red blocks)
2. Put a different keyboard on this pfSense machine as someone else mentioned.
3. restart pfSense machine.Post your results so someone else will know what has been found.
Take Care,
BC
