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    Internal NIC crashes down / no buffer space available

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Virtualization
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    • G
      Gimli
      last edited by

      You're welcome. It's been four days now and still no crash for me.

      I'll note that I also changed the size of the receive and transmit buffers under the advanced tab > performance options as well, to 1024 and 2048 respectively. I don't think this is what did it but that's another thing you may try if disabling the energy efficient ethernet option didn't do it.

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      • G
        Gimli
        last edited by

        Well, that was short-lived. My interface started crashing again on really fast transfers tonight. Same symptoms as before, it just took a few more days to start happening. Guess it wasn't the energy-efficient Ethernet setting after all.

        Back to the drawing board…

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        • K
          Kaavi
          last edited by

          Gimli, I have the exact same problem as you - did you find any solution back at the drawing board? :)

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          • G
            Gimli
            last edited by

            I haven't had a lot of time to do any more testing but I'm starting to think it may be a bug in the FreeBSD driver for the Hyper-V virtual NIC. I have a different box on which I installed pfSense natively (i.e. not as a VM) with the same NIC and I don't see the issue on that one.

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            • K
              Kaavi
              last edited by

              Gimli thanks for your reply, I tried to use another NIC (X552/x557-AT) instead of the I350 - unfortunally it is the same error :(

              So I guess you are correct about it being FreeBSD/Hyper-V issue :(

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              • G
                Gimli
                last edited by

                Alright, here's an update on this issue.

                For the last few weeks I haven't experienced the problem but I don't think I fixed it, it's more of a workaround. I added a cron job on the pfSense box that resets the interface that usually goes down with heavy usage at midnight every day. It appears that cycling the interface down/up before it crashes keeps it from crashing. The cycling is so fast that it doesn't even break connections that are active, it just delays them for a few milliseconds.

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                • V
                  Vorland
                  last edited by

                  We had the same problem, our setup:

                  Windows Server 2012 (without R2) - Hyper-V host
                  pfSense 2.2.6-RELEASE (amd64)
                  NIC: HP NC382i DP Multifunction Gigabit Server Adapter

                  Problem was resolved by installing all windows updates and updating NIC driver.

                  Hope this information will be helpful.

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                  • G
                    Gimli
                    last edited by

                    What time frame are you talking about Vorland? My servers have always been up-to-date on updates and drivers. Maybe it's one of the December updates that fixed it.

                    I'll disable my cron job for a while to see if it comes back.

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                    • V
                      Vorland
                      last edited by

                      I've installed all updates on 2016-01-06. I guess updated NIC drivers resolved the issue.

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                      • R
                        rodymcamp
                        last edited by

                        I also had this issue running freenas on top of esxi, the only information that I could find hinted that I needed to stop using VMXNET nic do to an issue with the free BSD driver and switch back to using the intel virtual nic. I have not had a crash sense.

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                        • L
                          LEckley
                          last edited by

                          Hi Guys,

                          Has anyone found a solution to this issue beyond restarting the interface using a cron?

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                          • G
                            Gimli
                            last edited by

                            I've disabled my cron job since the 22nd and haven't experienced the issue since. I don't think it's a question of drivers as I've had the same Intel drivers since last October (they're the latest) but I think the December patches from Microsoft may have fixed it.

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                            • L
                              LEckley
                              last edited by

                              @Gimli:

                              I've disabled my cron job since the 22nd and haven't experienced the issue since. I don't think it's a question of drivers as I've had the same Intel drivers since last October (they're the latest) but I think the December patches from Microsoft may have fixed it.

                              Thanks! I pushed the last round of MS updates last night, will see how it goes.

                              Cheers!

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                              • S
                                SkinnyT
                                last edited by

                                I've been having the same issue with the connection dropping when running a speed test.  It'll only crash on the upload though.

                                After about 3 days of pulling my hair out, I ended up disabling the Energy Efficient Ethernet setting on both NIC's and also turning off Flow Control.  I also changed the nbmclusters to 1000000.  I tried each of these settings on their own with no luck, but all three together seem to have made a difference.

                                All week I couldn't run one speedtest without dropping my WAN connection and last night I ran a test every 15 minutes for about two hours with no drops.

                                Now that I'm at work, I'm a little more hesitant to remote in and run one for fear of it dropping again, but hopefully in a few days I'll have a bit more confidence in it.

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                                • B
                                  bean72
                                  last edited by

                                  I have running into the same issue, for now I have my network running on a backup router until I can resolve this issue. What's weird is when it drops, I can still ping certain external IP's. My network adapter is a BCM5716, tried updating the drivers and still have the same problem.
                                  Anyone seeing anything in the logs on the hyper-V host?
                                  It seems that the error starts at the same time as event viewer logs the error: "The network link is down. Check to make sure the network cable is properly connected"

                                  I thought it was originally a faulty cable, but after switching the cable 3 times I'm guessing it's something else.

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                                  • G
                                    Gimli
                                    last edited by

                                    All I can recommend at this point is to make sure that you're running the latest version of pfSense, your host is fully up-to-date with Microsoft patches and NIC driver updates and that you disable the Energy Saving mode(s) in your host's NIC configuration.

                                    If that all fails, try with a different NIC.

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                                    • J
                                      jsingh
                                      last edited by

                                      Loosing connectivity with external switch on Hyper-V
                                      I have installed 2.3.1 release as a Hyper-V guest on server 2012 R2. WAN is working fine with an External Switch but LAN is connected with other NIC (Connected to the LAN). LAN is loosing connectivity and I restart the LAN interface most of the times or I have to reboot the pfsense guest OS.

                                      Even I have tried to use the internal switch on the LAN side and issue still exists. It is for sure not my NIC. It is something to do with the Hyper-V settings or pfSense.
                                      I ran similar setup in test lab on VMware Workstation and it works like a charm on it.

                                      Any solution guys!

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                                      • G
                                        Gimli
                                        last edited by

                                        Is your Windows host fully up-to-date with patches? Have you downloaded the most recent network drivers for your NIC? Have you disabled all power saving settings in your NIC configuration?

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                                        • T
                                          ttocs
                                          last edited by

                                          For those experiencing the 'No buffer space available' followed by full NIC failure on the WAN side when running PFsense in hyper-v try the following, it worked for me:

                                          • Pfsense Version: 2.4.5-RELEASE-p1

                                          • Hyper-V versions tested: Hyper Server 2019 (Core), Windows Server 2019 w/destop experience and hyper-v role, Windows Server 2016 w/desktop experience and hyper-v role

                                          • Cable Internet Speed: 200/10

                                          • For the USB NIC - I validated it did not matter if it was hooked to USB 3.x or 2.x - same issues occured with the disconnect. Validated there was not any thermal issues, maybe luke warm to the touch (tried 2 differnt adaptors, 2 different chipsets - same issues)

                                          • Drivers: Updated every driver and win updates - in the end this did not even matter, but it's still a good idea.
                                            Services running on PFSense: I have pfblockerNg running, dhcp server, snort (non-blocking), dnsbl with the resolver, and I redirect my domain dns queries back to my internal DCs for private AD dns routing.

                                          • Avg 24hour cpu/memory usage: 7% / 13% (no change even when the issue was occuring)

                                          • Correlating errors: Resolver: 'No buffer space available' - Gateways: 'dpinger WAN_DHCP 1.2.3.4: Alarm latency 10331us stddev 2932us loss 21%' [this triggered the default gateway action and causes the issue with hyper-v nic comms]

                                          Fix for me:

                                          • Make sure you have the Hyper-v host's performance options set to high performance. If you are using a USB NIC on the WAN side also make sure to disable the 'USB selective suspend' setting (advanced settings --> usb settings).

                                          • Recommend turning VMQ off in hyper-v and the NIC settings (if available). I cannot see this being needed with Pfsense and might be tricky to get working correctly (if at all) If you have a more advanced scenario where you need to deal with vRSS mapping the VMQs to distribute the packet load across cpus then maybe it's worth diving into.

                                          • This was the key for me with Hyper-v: In PFSense make sure to turn off the Gateway Monitoring Action here: System --> Routing --> Gateways --> Edit --> check the box 'Disable Gateway Monitoring Action'. Without this I would get around 20-24 hours max before the gateway alarm action would kick off (probably from junk latency on the cable network providers side), suspend the Nic and then it would never come back -- had to reboot then everything worked fine for another 20-24 hours.

                                          Note: I've tried proxmox and esxi and did not experience this issue so it appears to be Hyper-v specific.

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