Very unreliable SG-4860; weird behaviour and interfaces
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Is the console still working when LAN/WAN-connections are lost?
If yes: Are there any "timeout" messages when you type "dmesg" in the shell or in "clog /var/log/system.log" ?
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On my fifth go I am getting progress in stability. I decided to start completely fresh and not restore anything including certs etc.
I also decided to just use HTTP and not go HTTPS as its not public facing at all. That was causing alot of extra grief.
I still have the issue of the interfaces being numbered out of order.
I'm certain this caused me to lose my second attempt. The first was the accidental Community Edition logo that came up after a config restore.
The second I did by hand and chose igb0 for WAN and igb1 for LAN expecting the 0 and 1 to correspond to the first and second physical ports! Plugged in after wizard was done and got nowhere and reset.
Is the numbering on these machines always like this??
igb1 is first port and igb0 is second port? igb2 is third etc… Why??
Now I am working it as a router on a stick with only a WAN port operational serving only DNS and VPN both client and server and it is stable with HTTP web config.
The WAN is on a /30 network with my main Mikrotik router and it all seems good now.
But the port numbering really messed me up for a bit.
I want to get the serial console working too for future - can I do it just using a USB cable and linux? I use Archlinux on a laptop. I think gnu screen will work but I don't know which device to connect to ie. /dev/.... but am guessing "lsusb" might reveal it if I plug in the router on a USB cable? Yes?
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https://www.netgate.com/docs/rcc-dff-2220/freebsd.html
confirms the quirky port numbering. Would have been nice to know in advance.
https://www.netgate.com/docs/reference/rcc-ve-serial-console.html
How to connect to serial console.
i ran into all sorts of issues where the router became unreachable. On one early attempt just deleting completely unrelated test vlans not in use made the router unreachable. I hit some undocumented bugs for sure but we'll see how it goes.
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confirms the quirky port numbering. Would have been nice to know in advance.
You're provided a Quick Start Guide, which includes that on the very first page. Not sure how you expected to be informed of that if you didn't even look at the first page of the quick start guide.
i ran into all sorts of issues where the router became unreachable. On one early attempt just deleting completely unrelated test vlans not in use made the router unreachable. I hit some undocumented bugs for sure but we'll see how it goes.
Anything you're encountering there isn't specific to a 4860 or any particular hardware. I add and remove VLANs on live systems all the time and haven't broken anything, but there are always possibilities for edge case issues. If you have a replicable "do this and it breaks", I definitely want to know.
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After getting the interface numbering right and starting completely fresh I'm finally at a point where I have gradually started migrating my VLANs over and its going well.
I think I might have got a different start guide for the smaller devices which give the numbering in the ordinal way.
And how it seems Ok.
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How do I get my "free" copy of the book as a hardware purchaser?
Or is it just extra?
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HTML version is here: https://portal.pfsense.org/docs/manuals/sg-4860/quick-start-guide.html
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I mean the pfsense Book.
Not the hardware installation guide.
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How do I get my "free" copy of the book as a hardware purchaser?
Create an account at pfSense.org (pfSense shop) and then register your unit (the SG-4860)
and then you will be able to download this book as I am right informed, please correct me if not. -
BlueKobold's method worked for me. Try here for the HTML version: https://portal.pfsense.org/docs/book/
If you aren't logged into the pfsense support portal you'll get a login screen asking for the user/pass for your pfSense store account.