Once per month pfSense goes all crazy

kejianshi

Ohhhhhhhhh yeah. Its very common that the whole screen can look like a matrix screen saver when the video card is about to go/gone.

Had it a few times with my kid's nvidia power sucker / emergency-room-heater super-gamey cards over the years.

Thats part of the reason why if someone has a computer like that and wants to re-purpose it as pfsense, I always suggest pulling the gamey-card if they have on-board VGA on the mobo.

Less points of failure.

Nullity

@fearnothing:

If that kind of thing just gets an 'off topic' comment, female members will see the sexism as having gone unopposed. Humour is possible without alienating women, minorities, etc. and the whole point is to make people worried a bit so that they can think twice before posting something offensive.

Regarding graphics card, could that really cause jumbled/garbage characters? Didn't think corrupted video output could have that kind of result. Still, worth testing for sure along with the rest. Hope the OP lets us know what fixes it, I'm curious.

Eh, I think women are able to handle a few insults. They are not as fragile as you seem to think. If we had an entire thread devoted to bashing females, I could understand being offended, but just 1 comment… ::)

On-topic: I absolutely dread intermittent hardware troubles. Aside from running a memtest, the only thing I know to do is start replacing hardware... and that can cost precious $$$.

I could understand differrent colors or glitches, but I would not expect a gfx card to change characters. I dunno though. :)

charliem

@WaldemarH:

Logger doesn't show anything wrong (there is no entrance between 10 days ago and todays hard reset):
…
Feb 19 10:29:40 kernel: Copyright (c) 1992-2012 The FreeBSD Project.
Feb 19 10:29:40 syslogd: kernel boot file is /boot/kernel/kernel
Feb 7 10:42:22 kernel: MCA: Address 0x13c3700
Feb 7 10:42:22 kernel: MCA: CPU 0 COR GCACHE L2 EVICT error

This is a hardware error as Jim suggested. MCA = Machine Check Architecture; reported on the L2 cache RAM. So not likely a RAM chip problem (system memory), though a memtest of system RAM will probably trigger it. More likely a problem with the L2 cache built into the CPU, and although the COR means it was 'correctable', evidently it didn't get too far. I'd check CPU temperature, proper heatsink attachment, airflow, etc. If the system has a history of overclocking in a previous life, I'd start looking for a new CPU.

That CPU could also be around the right vintage to have some of the famous leaking / exploding capacitors on the MB. Check for bulging or leaks.

NOYB

Not that it will help with your video problem other than to let you know you're not alone. But my 2002 era DELL Inspiron 5200 based pfSense machine has a thermal sensitive video problem. Once it's up and running clean it seem to stay that way. But a reboot when warm will garble the video even during POST. Usually pounding on the keyboard a few times followed by another restart brings it back. I just live with it. Have another machine that could swap it with but it's use needs more dependable video.

Off topic humor sub-thread.
A number of years ago I made a commitment to refrain from making lude and vulgar quips. Then about a year later the Pope finally made a statement against the pervasive use of such language. Sometimes it seems like society has devolved to the puberty humor of jr. high school. Now I'm glad I stuck to my guns and didn't give in to the temptation in this case. And boy did it ever take a ton of will power to resist. One of the worst temptations since taking on that commitment. Been biting my tongue ever since this thread began. Hope this thread gets out of sight out of mind soon. Continuing to persevere.

kejianshi

Actually - Society has gone in an opposite direction from what you suggest. From easy going live and let live to zero defect and lets protest anything we might not do or say ourselves. You name it, there is an organized group opposing it. Being upset about something is an obsession these days. You should have smited me also. Its a free world.

WaldemarH

Thanks guys for all the responses I'll definitely look into it next week. And yeah the machine is from different era, so I'll do memtest, diskchk.

Also I'm more and more looking at the pfsense hardware. Does anybody have experience with:
http://store.pfsense.org/VK-T40E/ (with 30GB ssd option)
http://store.netgate.com/kit-APU1C4.aspx (ssd option)

Any stability issues,..? Maybe it's really time to invest into something more recent.

Edit:
After some thinking I came with the solution that I'll replace parts of the hardware with my old machine
(ASUS,AMD 3GHz,8GB ECC) and in that way both machines will have a faster newer hardware to work with.
And all for just 200eur which is much cheaper then upper options.

Br
Waldemar

kejianshi

Yeah - Thats the same kind of choice I feel I have when voting… They are about the same when you are done configuring I'd imagine.

jimp

Clearly, it's a werewolf (werewall?).

You'll need a silver screwdriver to deal with it properly.

kejianshi

A silver screwdriver may come with the kit he is considering… (-;

Nullity

@jimp:

Clearly, it's a werewolf (werewall?).

You'll need a silver screwdriver to deal with it properly.

lol. Your brand of comedy is peculiar, in a good way. ???

or maybe I need more/less coffee/morning. :o

Harvy66

I have a Dell i7-920 that if you leave it powered down for more than a few tens of seconds and you boot it back up, it will get memory errors. Maybe 5-10 minutes before Windows blue screens. Memtest will show problems all over the board. Power it down, wait 5 seconds, power it back up, 3 days of memtest, no errors, months of up-time in Windows, no issues. Stable.

This is the strangest problem that I have ran into over my years. Typically something giving these kinds of problems is in its death throes, but instead it has been working well for 6+ years. I finally recently replaced it. The motherboard and CPU are now wrapped in aluminum foil in storage.