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

    PfSense crashes ever few weeks - log is blank

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
    24 Posts 7 Posters 3.9k Views
    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.
    • DerelictD Offline
      Derelict LAYER 8 Netgate
      last edited by

      USB Ethernet acting up?  Try a real card.

      Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA
      A comprehensive network diagram is worth 10,000 words and 15 conference calls.
      DO NOT set a source address/port in a port forward or firewall rule unless you KNOW you need it!
      Do Not Chat For Help! NO_WAN_EGRESS(TM)

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • F Offline
        FarmerB3d
        last edited by

        Nope. Not using that. It's plugged in but not actually used for anything.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • D Offline
          doktornotor Banned
          last edited by

          @FarmerB3rd:

          Nope. Not using that. It's plugged in but not actually used for anything.

          So remove it!!!

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

            No - Don't unplug the USB thingy.  Investigate it for a few weeks.  Trouble shoot another couple of months.  Try compiling a dozen different drivers…  Don't give up on the USB NIC (that you aren't using)

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • F Offline
              FarmerB3d
              last edited by

              I've had the USB NIC in there for a while. There is a problem with pfSense going belly-up. I am trying to understand why it is doing that. If it is the NIC then, and the logs or something else points towards it, I will happily drive over it. However, I am more interested in understanding why it went belly-up and why the logs have a black hole in them and if there is a bug, to log it so it can be improved further.

              I have no doubt that the box will stay up for a few months now without a problem. It works really well, handles 5 concurrent VPNs, multiple VPN servers and moves about 50GB a day through the WAN. pfSense is very good.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • D Offline
                doktornotor Banned
                last edited by

                Yeah, as said above, don't give up. The galore of "Linkup detected on disabled interface" log entries is definitely not good enough reason to remove crappy unused hardware!  ;D ;D ;D

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

                  How do you know its not the USB port going bad or the USB device going bad.  Its every bit as likely as some other piece of hardware going bad.

                  Plus they are crap…  If you don't need it, that alone would motivate me to unplug it.

                  Will it cost you something to unplug it?

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • F Offline
                    FarmerB3d
                    last edited by

                    ok ok, it's out now :)

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

                      Cool - Now lets wait for a crash.  Might it be a pfsense 2.2 distro issue?  sure.  Or maybe some other hardware issue? Maybe.  We are 1 step closer to finding out.  (-:

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • F Offline
                        FarmerB3d
                        last edited by

                        Ok, happy to wait for the next crash (well, not much choice there ;) ) but what can be done now to look for why it crashed previously? Any other logs I don't know about?

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

                          I don't know.  Hardware doesn't always crash in a graceful way thats lets you know whats going on.  Plus, I'm not super expert at finding the cause of weird crashes.

                          It is good advice to keep your hardware limited to exactly what you need and to take away anything not needed, especially if support for said hardware is flakey at best.

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • K Offline
                            kewiha
                            last edited by

                            Fanless computer makes me think of heat issues, is PFSense reading your CPU temps? I might poke the heatsinks, and any chips on the board while the system is running to see if they're heating up. If you have a cruddy power supply, now would be an excellent time to get a proper one. 80Plus Bronze rating, and if an affordable unit claims to be C6/C7 or Haswell Ready, that's really important for this application. Most systems will draw 80Watts or more at idle, so many cheap PSUs don't bother testing lower power draw (like an atom board!).

                            64GB SSD sounds old… if it's an old OCZ drive or something sketchy and you don't need the space, try cloning PFSense to a flash drive. I had a Vector Plus R2 in my PFSense box and every few weeks the partition table decided to not exist. It's pretty hard to troubleshoot a bootloader error when the machine is buried in a closet. SMART info in the gui should be able to check for bad sectors, maybe even run a surface test. My OCZ completes an extended test in 10 seconds (64GB @ Sata II...impossibru!), and incidentally has a back SMART checksum according to gsmartcontrol.

                            If you can afford to take the machine down for a day or so, running Memtest would be a good idea.

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • C Offline
                              cmb
                              last edited by

                              @FarmerB3rd:

                              ok ok, it's out now :)

                              Good! :) I suspect there's a good chance that's the root of the issue, given it was triggering log noise before the reboot.

                              Did you get a crash report prompt? Having the backtrace should significantly reduce the possible causes.

                              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • F Offline
                                FarmerB3d
                                last edited by

                                The board hovers around 44C so don't think heat is a problem. While it is fanless it is in a very perforated case: http://linitx.com/images/products/M350_Universal_Mini-ITX_Enclosure_main_large.jpg

                                Yes, the SSD is an old repurposed one but was healthy (SMART) when I took it out of the previous machine. I'll check SMART again and see what it says.

                                I had another look at the log file - it's not missing sections. It has whole block of information out of order - as if it wrote in the middle of the file, then the end and then back in the middle. I can only assume the partition table is dodge… Will focus on that.

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

                                  CLOGs…  Perhaps?

                                  https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Why_can%27t_I_view_view_log_files_with_cat/grep/etc%3F_%28clog%29

                                  Don't break it thinking you have an issue there.  At first glance, this seems normal to me.

                                  I'd leave it alone and wait for more crashes since you removed that USB thingy.  Give it a chance to be stable.  Unless its already crashing again?

                                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                  • F Offline
                                    FarmerB3d
                                    last edited by

                                    ok, it may well be that. The "writing in the middle" continues.

                                    Mar 17 08:10:06 pfSense php-fpm[2384]: /index.php: Successful login for user 'admin' from: 10.10.50.X
                                    Mar 17 08:10:06 pfSense php-fpm[2384]: /index.php: Successful login for user 'admin' from: 10.10.50.X
                                    Mar 17 09:06:43 pfSense sshd[14419]: error: PAM: authentication error for root from 10.10.50.X
                                    Mar 17 09:06:43 pfSense sshd[14419]: error: PAM: authentication error for root from 10.10.50.X
                                    Mar 17 09:06:49 pfSense sshd[14419]: Accepted keyboard-interactive/pam for root from 10.10.50.X port XXXX ssh2
                                    ad_status: Syncing firewall
                                    Feb  1 12:10:30 pfSense kernel: ovpns2: link state changed to DOWN
                                    Feb  1 12:10:30 pfSense check_reload_status: Reloading filter
                                    Feb  1 12:10:30 pfSense kernel: ovpns2: changing name to 'tun2'
                                    Feb  1 12:10:31 pfSense check_reload_status: Syncing firewall

                                    I see most of my log files are exactly 500KB so it stops at that point and writes from the top again.

                                    Thanks for that - removes my biggest worry.

                                    It's not crashing and I don't expect it to crash for a long time. This is the second or third time it has crashed since early June - most of which was running Alpha nightlies.

                                    Also, the crash, as far as I can see, is not a panic (as I know it). The system is still up and working but just really badly.

                                    thanks
                                    FB

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

                                      Well - with nightlies I'd be expecting some glitches anyway.  Basically you are beta testing, which is nice but its certainly not the way I would start out.  I think stable releases are a better bet for someone just getting to know pfsense.

                                      Did I say beta testing…  I should have said alpha testing  :o

                                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                      • F Offline
                                        FarmerB3d
                                        last edited by

                                        TBH, I was surprised how good the Alphas were. Only issue was this one I have now. I needed Alpha because the hardware I bought was not supported by the previous release of BSD.

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

                                          Are the alphas using a different version of BSD than 2.2?  (I'm not sure - I haven't tried)

                                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                          • H Offline
                                            heper
                                            last edited by

                                            afaik the early ones used 10.0 ,  while now they are on 10.1

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