Netgate Discussion Forum
    • Categories
    • Recent
    • Tags
    • Popular
    • Users
    • Search
    • Register
    • Login

    All-in-one homeserver, advisable?

    General pfSense Questions
    6
    38
    6.2k
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as topic
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it.
    • S
      shebang1234
      last edited by

      @kejianshi:

      Sure its not powering down the USB ports when you haven't touched the machine for a while?

      Oh my God. Thank you! That worked. I wouldn't have thought that Ubuntu was powering the device down in less than a minute! It's been running for 7/8 minutes now.

      EDIT: Scratch that. It failed eventually, just took a little longer than before.

      Here's the log

      
      Sep 27 15:11:22	ppp: [opt1_link0] LCP: no reply to 4 echo request(s)
      Sep 27 15:11:32	ppp: [opt1_link0] LCP: no reply to 5 echo request(s)
      Sep 27 15:11:32	ppp: [opt1_link0] LCP: peer not responding to echo requests
      Sep 27 15:11:32	ppp: [opt1_link0] LCP: state change Opened --> Stopping
      Sep 27 15:11:32	ppp: [opt1_link0] Link: Leave bundle "opt1"
      Sep 27 15:11:32	ppp: [opt1] Bundle: Status update: up 0 links, total bandwidth 9600 bps
      Sep 27 15:11:32	ppp: [opt1] IPCP: Close event
      Sep 27 15:11:32	ppp: [opt1] IPCP: state change Opened --> Closing
      Sep 27 15:11:32	ppp: [opt1] IPCP: SendTerminateReq #6
      Sep 27 15:11:32	ppp: [opt1] IPCP: LayerDown
      Sep 27 15:11:34	ppp: [opt1] IFACE: Down event
      Sep 27 15:11:34	ppp: [opt1] IFACE: Rename interface ppp1 to ppp1
      Sep 27 15:11:34	ppp: [opt1] IPV6CP: Close event
      Sep 27 15:11:34	ppp: [opt1] IPV6CP: state change Stopped --> Closed
      Sep 27 15:11:34	ppp: [opt1] IPCP: Down event
      Sep 27 15:11:34	ppp: [opt1] IPCP: LayerFinish
      Sep 27 15:11:34	ppp: [opt1] Bundle: No NCPs left. Closing links...
      Sep 27 15:11:34	ppp: [opt1] IPCP: state change Closing --> Initial
      Sep 27 15:11:34	ppp: [opt1] IPV6CP: Down event
      Sep 27 15:11:34	ppp: [opt1] IPV6CP: state change Closed --> Initial
      Sep 27 15:11:34	ppp: [opt1_link0] LCP: SendTerminateReq #2
      Sep 27 15:11:34	ppp: [opt1_link0] LCP: LayerDown
      Sep 27 15:11:36	ppp: [opt1_link0] LCP: SendTerminateReq #3
      Sep 27 15:11:38	ppp: [opt1_link0] LCP: state change Stopping --> Stopped
      Sep 27 15:11:38	ppp: [opt1_link0] LCP: LayerFinish
      Sep 27 15:19:07	ppp: Multi-link PPP daemon for FreeBSD
      Sep 27 15:19:07	ppp:
      Sep 27 15:19:07	ppp: process 90236 started, version 5.7 (root@pf2_1_1_i386.pfsense.org 08:21 15-Aug-2014)
      Sep 27 15:19:07	ppp: [opt1_link0] Link: DOWN event
      Sep 27 15:19:07	ppp: [opt1_link0] LCP: Down event
      Sep 27 15:19:07	ppp: [opt1_link0] LCP: state change Stopped --> Starting
      Sep 27 15:19:07	ppp: [opt1_link0] LCP: LayerStart
      Sep 27 15:19:07	ppp: [opt1_link0] Link: reconnection attempt 1 in 3 seconds
      Sep 27 15:19:07	ppp: caught fatal signal term
      Sep 27 15:19:07	ppp: [opt1] IFACE: Close event
      Sep 27 15:19:07	ppp: [opt1] IPCP: Close event
      Sep 27 15:19:07	ppp: [opt1] IPV6CP: Close event
      Sep 27 15:19:07	ppp: waiting for process 10039 to die...
      Sep 27 15:19:08	ppp: waiting for process 10039 to die...
      Sep 27 15:19:09	ppp: [opt1] Bundle: Shutdown
      Sep 27 15:19:09	ppp: [opt1_link0] Link: Shutdown
      Sep 27 15:19:09	ppp: process 10039 terminated
      Sep 27 15:19:09	ppp: web: web is not running
      Sep 27 15:19:09	ppp: [opt1] Bundle: Interface ng1 created
      Sep 27 15:19:09	ppp: [opt1_link0] Link: OPEN event
      Sep 27 15:19:09	ppp: [opt1_link0] LCP: Open event
      Sep 27 15:19:09	ppp: [opt1_link0] LCP: state change Initial --> Starting
      Sep 27 15:19:09	ppp: [opt1_link0] LCP: LayerStart
      Sep 27 15:19:23	ppp: [opt1_link0] CHAT: The modem is not responding to "AT" at ModemCmd: label.
      Sep 27 15:19:23	ppp: [opt1_link0] MODEM: chat script failed
      
      
      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • K
        kejianshi
        last edited by

        Are those plugged directly into the computer?  Could you try it with a powered usb hub?

        (running low on ideas)

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • S
          shebang1234
          last edited by

          @kejianshi:

          Are those plugged directly into the computer?  Could you try it with a powered usb hub?

          (running low on ideas)

          Don't have access to one right now. And I don't think that could be the problem (the dongle LED wouldn't be ON if it was powered down, right?) Anyway, I tried all the resources I found on setting the autosuspend mode off, nothing has worked so far. I checked the uptime the last time it failed, and that was about 16 minutes. The problem I am facing is similar to https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=45157.0
          The dongle disconnects after sometime and it becomes impossible to reconnect it later (even removing and reinserting doesn't work.) When this happens, one of the PHP processes starts taking 40% CPU usage and must be killed manually for the system to work. It's just unreliable from that point onwards; I NEED to restart it to make the mobile internet or anything related to pfsense work.

          At the moment, I am using pfsense (64 bit) on VMware Workstation on a Windows 8.1 host and everything seems to be working perfectly. The link has been up for 40ish minutes and hasn't failed. I can remove the dongle as I wish, disconnect and reconnect without reboots.
          Could it just be that the dongle doesn't work well with 32 bit pfsense? Maybe I should test 32 bit pfsense on VMware or perhaps just give up on this :/

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • K
            kejianshi
            last edited by

            It could be that the port just isn't pushing enough power on its on.  I've experienced that many times with usb devices.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • stephenw10S
              stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
              last edited by

              I would suspect some issue with the USB pass through to the VM. It's probably timing out somewhere. Maybe to save resources it only represents the USB device when it sees call to it. There could be many reasons. The USB dongle and pfSense really aren't designed/tested to operate in this way so you may be up against a insolvable issue.

              Steve

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • S
                shebang1234
                last edited by

                I fixed the problem by disabling ACPI and APM but that still didn't allow me to disconnect and reconnect the dongles. Frustrated from that and the extraordinarily high idle load values (>1 on Ubuntu and 0.7 in pfsense,) I decided not to go ahead with this. Moreover my temperatures seemed to be monotonically increasing in an air conditioned room.
                I am getting better resource utilization under VMware workstation (it idles at 1% usage.) For now this works.

                As far as the netbook is concerned. I just cannot run the firewall and server on it simultaneously if I want isolation. Perhaps a chrooted environment / jail was my best option; I don't have the patience to deal with that for now. Maybe I should have just stuck with not trying to isolate it anyway. The netbook might be repurposed as a media server / HTPC later.

                Note: I tried to get ESXi 3.5 to work on it (last version that supported 32 bit machines) but it threw a PSOD before I could install it.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • K
                  kejianshi
                  last edited by

                  Well - I didn't see that coming. (-;

                  I'd try to find a abuse celeron dual core laptop with some missing keys cracked screen, bad battery etc that is useless to the unimaginative person who owns it…  Grab it and install Your things there.  Actually - There are probably i7 laptops like this by now that people  will almost pay you to take off their hands.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • S
                    shebang1234
                    last edited by

                    @kejianshi:

                    Well - I didn't see that coming. (-;

                    I'd try to find a abuse celeron dual core laptop with some missing keys cracked screen, bad battery etc that is useless to the unimaginative person who owns it…  Grab it and install Your things there.  Actually - There are probably i7 laptops like this by now that people  will almost pay you to take off their hands.

                    Hard to find them online :S I found dual core servers for around 200 USD on ebay. I have a laptop sitting around with a 32 processor and Vt-x and a C2D E4300 desktop as alternatives.

                    I might keep the netbook as a dedicated pfsense firewall. The other servers can reside in the workstation, they don't really need high availability. If I could somehow disable the LEDs in fans and power / HDD LEDs, I might be able to sleep in the same room! The power footprint may not be as high as I am imagining, I should really just measure it.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • S
                      shebang1234
                      last edited by

                      Using my workstation as a router/firewall was becoming cumbersome, with all those lights and stuff. I ended up moving it back to my netbook, only this time I used jails. Apparently the main features of jails are performance and security: http://www.bsdnow.tv/tutorials/jails so it seemed like the perfect choice for me.

                      Everything works perfectly now. My load values are actually lower than 1.5 now! And temperatures actually decrease when the machine is idle and/or air conditioned.

                      I would've liked to put the jails in a DMZ but that just can't be done I guess. There is no way to add NICs and the VLAN feature on my ADSL router seems buggy. I really should get some new networking hardware.

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • stephenw10S
                        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                        last edited by

                        Interesting. So what are you running in the jails and what is hosting, FreeBSD?

                        Steve

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • S
                          shebang1234
                          last edited by

                          @stephenw10:

                          Interesting. So what are you running in the jails and what is hosting, FreeBSD?

                          Steve

                          Host is pfsense and the jails run FreeBSD. I don't think an alternate setup is possible. I believe pfsense can't run in a jail, and jails cant run anything but FreeBSD.
                          I have a guest with asterisk, and another with apache/transmission/samba.

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • First post
                            Last post
                          Copyright 2025 Rubicon Communications LLC (Netgate). All rights reserved.