New install - no browser menu or internet communication

stephenw10

Ah! This is making a lot more sense this morning. :)

Steve

xtek

@wallabybob

Is that with the Win7 box connected to the modem?

Yes

Have you changed your pfSense LAN interface to 192.168.2.1/24 with DHCP enabled?

Yes

Did you reboot after that change?

Yes

If you then connect your Win7 box to the pFsense LAN interface does it get an IP address in the DHCP range you configured?

Yes, 192.168.2.11

wallabybob

@xtek:

If you then connect your Win7 box to the pFsense LAN interface does it get an IP address in the DHCP range you configured?

Yes, 192.168.2.11

Good. You must have physical communication between your Win7 box and the pfSense box.

On the Win7 box, in a command prompt window, please type the following commands in turn and report if you get a ping response. If there is no ping reponse please report what ping reports:```
ping 192.168.2.1
ping 8.8.8.8
ping www.google.com

These will help determine if you have basic connectivity to the Internet and if you have a correctly configured Name Server.

xtek

I just refreshed all the LAN/WAN settings we've discussed, rebooted, and… success! pfSense is running and I'm able to access the browser menu and have internet access.

xtek

Now that I can access the browser menu, do you guys have any recommendations on a setup guide? I've watched a couple YouTube videos but they seemed more oriented toward networked systems.

Thanks a bunch. I'd never have figured all that stuff out.

wallabybob

I'm glad you have it working now.

There is a variety of setup guides, how-tos and faq at http://doc.pfsense.org

Can you be more specific about what your looking for in a setup guide. What level of knowledge should the setup guide assume?

stephenw10

Nice. :)

So just to clarify this I read back through the thread and it looks to me as though it should have started working once you had enabled DHCP on the pfSense LAN interface. The only thing that has happened since is that you rebooted the box, something that I said shouldn't be necessary but Wallabybob recommended. Does that sound right?
Also I can see that I made some assumptions early on that turned out to be wrong. A lesson for me there I think.

@xtek:

Now that I can access the browser menu, do you guys have any recommendations on a setup guide?

I'm not quite sure what you are asking for here. The first time you access the webgui you are presented with a wizard for setting up all the basic requirements for a firewall/router. The default setup is to allow all traffic from the LAN side out onto the internet and to block any new connections from the internet to your internal machines. You can change this by adding appropriate firewall rules if or when you need to.

There are two things I would recommend you change.
In the web interface go to Interfaces: WAN: Because your WAN interface has a private IP address, 192.168.1.X, you should un-check the setting 'Block private networks' at the bottom of that page.
Go to System: Advanced: In the 'Secure shell' section, check 'Enable Secure Shell'. This will take a few moments. Doing this will allow you connect to the pfSense console via SSH using, for example, Putty in Windows. This means you can access the box from another room etc and also copy and paste from the console window which can be very useful.

A further change would be to try to move your public IP address from the modem WAN interface to the pfSense WAN interface. This can be achieved by putting the modem in bridge mode and connecting via PPPoE directly from pfSense. It makes things like port forwarding far easier and avoids double NAT. I wouldn't recommend you try this straight away though! ;)

Steve

xtek

I'm comfortable with Windows, command line, and most hardware but the whole networking area is new to me. So for our purposes here, I'd say a novice guide would be appropriate.

@stephenw10 - sorry about that confusion, my blunder on the IP.

Thanks again to wallabybob and stephenw10 for the assistance. I'm very happy pfSense is functional and looking forward to learning how to set it up.

stephenw10

No need to apologise. Like I said I made some incorrect assumptions that came back to bite me. ;)

It would be nice to know if you think that rebooting the pfSense box was the only further change required though.

Steve

xtek

I think that when we set the proper LAN address range and enabled DHCP it would have worked. This morning I simply went back through the steps you and I had previously discussed to be sure I hadn't made a mistake, and the rebooted the console. So yes, I believe rebooting made the difference. The tip off was when the console boot didn't hang for a couple minutes trying to reach the time server.

wallabybob

@stephenw10:

The only thing that has happened since is that you rebooted the box, something that I said shouldn't be necessary but Wallabybob recommended.

My experience has been that things like moving a subnet from one interface to another and deleting a conflicting subnet from an interface seem to require a reboot to take effect. They are probably not things experienced users do regularly.

@stephenw10:

Also I can see that I made some assumptions early on that turned out to be wrong. A lesson for me there I think.

Often problems are reported with inadequate information so it is necessary to make some assumptions to get started. After a few request/reply exchanges with nothing conflicting with the assumptions its easy to forget that the starting point was assumptions.