The link state of an interface (bridge member) goes up/down continuously

stephenw10

Yes, I'm seeing the same behaviour. If I boot the box with the bridge connected NICs already up everything seems fine. I'll leave it up for a while and monitor things.

Steve

CS

So far when the box boots with all the NICs up it works fine. The problem is that I don't have all the NICs up and running 24x7…which means I need to reboot pfsense every time a NIC goes up. :(

chpalmer

@/CS:

Let's provide some feedback to help developers find a solution:

Bridge0 (LAN) has 2 members: OPT1 and OPT2

2.1 release on a Watchguard X550e with Marvell interfaces.

Ive got a similar setup as you. Ive renamed the interfaces V1 and V2 and the bridge Voipbridge.

I can duplicate your findings exactly.

One thing thats interesting to note is that Siproxd still sees the OPT interfaces as OPT (n) and not the renamed names. I had no problems with this setup under 2.0.3.

jimp

Try this fix:
https://github.com/pfsense/pfsense/commit/f3a4601c85c4de78caa4f12fefd64067fd83dbe8

It seems to only affect certain NICs that bounce their link on some configuration operations.

CS

@jimp:

Try this fix:
https://github.com/pfsense/pfsense/commit/f3a4601c85c4de78caa4f12fefd64067fd83dbe8

It seems to only affect certain NICs that bounce their link on some configuration operations.

Many thanks jimp! It works fine for me. ;D

stephenw10

Nice. :)
I'll have to give this a try when I get home.
Thanks Jim.

Steve

chpalmer

@/CS:

Many thanks jimp! It works fine for me. ;D

Ditto! 8)

Mavy

Fixed it for me aswell :)

stephenw10

Thought I'd report back that this worked for me too.
I have another bridge of fxp(4) NICs that didn't have that problem so as you say it's not all NICs that are affected.

First chance I've had to try the System Patches package. Nice. :)

Steve

ESPNSTI

@jimp:

Try this fix:
https://github.com/pfsense/pfsense/commit/f3a4601c85c4de78caa4f12fefd64067fd83dbe8

It seems to only affect certain NICs that bounce their link on some configuration operations.

This worked on some interfaces for me, but not others.
Looking at the system logs and the patch code, I could see that it was still going through the same path, and the IP address was empty:

Oct 17 16:59:32 	php: rc.newwanip: rc.newwanip: Informational is starting em1.
Oct 17 16:59:32 	php: rc.newwanip: rc.newwanip: on (IP address: ) (interface: opt1) (real interface: em1).
Oct 17 16:59:32 	php: rc.newwanip: rc.newwanip: Failed to update opt1 IP, restarting...

I then looked at /cf/conf/config.xml and found that there were empty <ipaddr>xml tags on the interfaces that still had problems.
The IP address was set at some point on those in the process of creating the bridge.
I removed the empty tags from the config.xml file, rebooted, and the problem went away:

Oct 17 19:09:16 	php: rc.newwanip: rc.newwanip: Informational is starting em1.
Oct 17 19:09:16 	php: rc.newwanip: Interface does not have an IP address, nothing to do.

I'm not familiar with php at all, but I assume the isset function perhaps doesn't account for empty tags and returns true:

  if (($curwanip == "") && !(isset($config['interfaces'][$interface]['ipaddr']))) {
    log_error("Interface does not have an IP address, nothing to do.");
    return;
  }

FYI, I'm running the same configuration as the OP:
pfSense 2.1 on a Soekris net6501-50 (Intel 82574L Gigabit Ethernet ports)
I have WAN assigned to em0, OPT1-7 assigned to em1-7 with IPv4 and IPv6 set to none, and LAN is assigned to Bridge0, consisting of OPT1-7.

Anyway, thanks for the patch, that made things work a lot better. ;D

Also, the way that system patches process works is rather impressive.</ipaddr>

stephenw10

Interesting, thanks for the heads up. :)

No spurious tags left in my config file. I don't think I ever had them set as anything but bridged on that box though.

Steve

ceama

Thanks Steve.
I'll try it. Some others tried the system patches feature. I guess that's the way to do it. There I go re-inventing the wheel again.

ceama

The official fix works for the msk driver. I like the system patch tool. It lets you use your own patches or official github links.

mattlach

@/CS:

@jimp:

Try this fix:
https://github.com/pfsense/pfsense/commit/f3a4601c85c4de78caa4f12fefd64067fd83dbe8

It seems to only affect certain NICs that bounce their link on some configuration operations.

Many thanks jimp! It works fine for me. ;D

Please pardon my ignorance, but how do I apply this fix?

Do I just replace my existing /etc/rc.newwanip with this file?

mattlach

@mattlach:

Please pardon my ignorance, but how do I apply this fix?

Do I just replace my existing /etc/rc.newwanip with this file?

So, I just tried doing this, rebooted the pfSense box, but my devices keep going up and down.

My configuration is an AMD E350 board with two Intel Pro/1000 dual NIC's and the on board Realtek 8111C junk.

Any thoughts?

chpalmer

I added the 4 highlighted lines to my existing file.

Otherwise you could chance it and gitsync…

mattlach

@mattlach:

@mattlach:

Please pardon my ignorance, but how do I apply this fix?

Do I just replace my existing /etc/rc.newwanip with this file?

So, I just tried doing this, rebooted the pfSense box, but my devices keep going up and down.

My configuration is an AMD E350 board with two Intel Pro/1000 dual NIC's and the on board Realtek 8111C junk.

Any thoughts?

So, making these changes to /etc/rc.newwanip did not fix the problem on it's own, but then I decided to try to just disable the onboard ethernet (Realtek 8111C) and that actually did the trick. They are no longer cycling for me.

I left the Realtek interface on just as an extra port in case I ever needed it, not something to rely on, as I know they are garbage, but I hadn't considered that it could interfere with the proper working of my good NIC's

Thanks for the help folks.

stephenw10

Just for reference using the system patches package takes away the possibility of typo errors. You just enter the commit number and everything is done for you.

Steve

ceama

@stephenw10:

Thought I'd report back that this worked for me too.
I have another bridge of fxp(4) NICs that didn't have that problem so as you say it's not all NICs that are affected.

First chance I've had to try the System Patches package. Nice. :)

Steve

I have an issue that has almost the same symptoms with Sun hardware part 501-5406-07. I know there has to be hundreds of units out there with this hardware in them. I have personally built about 25 units with this quad fast Ethernet card. I tried to submit it to Redmine but it was rejected. I can fix it myself but I was wondering if it should be fixed in the pfSense code or in the hme driver. Also, being new at reporting bugs, I am curious if I should try to contact the author of the driver if Redmine rejects it? It is a real bug in my opinion. I am a little surprised I haven't heard any one else complaining. Here is the Redmine issue with the reject by Chris Buechler. https://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/3373
It defines the issue.

stephenw10

Sounds exactly like this thread: http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,69125.15.html
Unfortunately that wasn't really resolved usefully in my opinion.

Steve