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    No web GUI when internet is down

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
    dhcpwebguidhcp6webconfigurator
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    • B
      bdben
      last edited by

      Glad I'm not the only one at least! I think you might be onto something there - I should test whether or not I can access the GUI with internet down completely vs trying to renew the IP. But that does seem to fit with what I've noticed about dhclient apparently getting stuck. Maybe it's being called from the main thread of the GUI and causing it to freeze? I'd think the process should be forked or called from another thread somehow, since it can take a few seconds to run in the best of times, but then again this is designed to run on minimal hardware and buttery smooth web GUI performance is not the primary goal of any router.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • NollipfSenseN
        NollipfSense @bdben
        last edited by

        @bdben and @pftdm007 If both of you are experiencing this issue using a cable modem, Click on WAN interface, and scroll down to the image below, then click advance and set 900 seconds in the timeout box which equals 15mins, then reboot ... that will resolve the issue. The WebGUI checks on lots of stuff on the Internet and why it goes weird without WAN.

        Screen Shot 2020-04-22 at 2.37.17 PM.png

        pfSense+ 23.09 Lenovo Thinkcentre M93P SFF Quadcore i7 dual Raid-ZFS 128GB-SSD 32GB-RAM PCI-Intel i350-t4 NIC, -Intel QAT 8950.
        pfSense+ 23.09 VM-Proxmox, Dell Precision Xeon-W2155 Nvme 500GB-ZFS 128GB-RAM PCIe-Intel i350-t4, Intel QAT-8950, P-cloud.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • B
          bcruze
          last edited by bcruze

          under system > advanced > networking > very last option. do you have that enabled to reset states upon wan change?

          that will cause the gui to not respond for several minutes. in fact i've had to force close the browser or try another one if i have that set

          its also under misc and gateway monitoring

          NollipfSenseN 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • NollipfSenseN
            NollipfSense @bcruze
            last edited by

            @bcruze Well, if you don't have a cable modem, you could surely try that and reboot.

            pfSense+ 23.09 Lenovo Thinkcentre M93P SFF Quadcore i7 dual Raid-ZFS 128GB-SSD 32GB-RAM PCI-Intel i350-t4 NIC, -Intel QAT 8950.
            pfSense+ 23.09 VM-Proxmox, Dell Precision Xeon-W2155 Nvme 500GB-ZFS 128GB-RAM PCIe-Intel i350-t4, Intel QAT-8950, P-cloud.

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            • GertjanG
              Gertjan
              last edited by

              @bdben and @pftdm007 : open a console session, or SSH (Putty or other SSH client) and use option 8
              Make the screen as big as possible.
              Type this command :

              top
              

              Lines 8 and further down show the most used process - real time.

              Now, do your 'modem' thing - reboot it, rip out the ISP cable connection.

              Try to access theGUI.

              And see what with our 'top' screen.
              What process are rising at the top == are asking the most processor power ?
              Do the keyboard magic (make a text screen copy - no image please) and past here.

              Like :

              last pid: 58192;  load averages:  0.26,  0.23,  0.18                                                                                                      up 2+22:05:39  08:28:39
              83 processes:  1 running, 82 sleeping
              CPU:  0.0% user,  0.0% nice,  0.2% system,  0.0% interrupt, 99.8% idle
              Mem: 75M Active, 734M Inact, 316M Wired, 100M Buf, 815M Free
              Swap: 4096M Total, 4096M Free
              
                PID USERNAME       THR PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE   C   TIME    WCPU COMMAND
              78388 unbound          2  20    0   821M   459M kqread  1  11:00   0.34% unbound
              87913 root             1  20    0  7820K  3672K CPU1    1   0:00   0.09% top
              64006 root             1  20    0  4644K  2324K select  0   1:35   0.03% clog_pfb
               5762 root             5  52    0  6904K  2344K uwait   0   1:02   0.02% dpinger
              63664 uucp             1  20    0  6632K  2632K select  1   0:52   0.02% usbhid-ups
              80367 root             1  20    0 12732K  7704K select  0   0:00   0.01% sshd
               3859 root             5  52    0  6904K  2332K uwait   0   0:42   0.01% dpinger
                427 root             1  20    0  9156K  5480K select  0   0:27   0.01% devd
              54961 dhcpd            1  20    0 22732K 16136K select  0   0:28   0.01% dhcpd
              53953 dhcpd            1  20    0 16460K 11108K select  1   0:27   0.01% dhcpd
              46589 root             1  20    0 12464K  5800K select  1   0:34   0.01% ntpd
              70232 root             1  20    0 19256K 14676K select  1   0:17   0.01% perl
              64440 root             1  20    0  6468K  2432K select  0   0:18   0.00% upsd
                341 root             1  20    0 95264K 24936K kqread  1   0:09   0.00% php-fpm
              60879 root             1  20    0 12548K  7928K kqread  1   2:26   0.00% lighttpd_pfb
              33289 root             1  20    0  6964K  2712K bpf     1   0:06   0.00% filterlog
              .....
              

              No "help me" PM's please. Use the forum, the community will thank you.
              Edit : and where are the logs ??

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • RicoR
                Rico LAYER 8 Rebel Alliance
                last edited by

                System > Update > Update Settings > Disable the Dashboard auto-update check

                -Rico

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • B
                  bdben
                  last edited by

                  @bcruze I don't have that option checked, but I can see now that would cause this issue.

                  @NollipfSense I am using a cable modem, so I set the settings as you suggested (thanks for the screenshot, very helpful). When I applied the settings, I lost my internet connection with the same symptoms as usual, so I took the opportunity to do some other suggested troubleshooting before the reboot. Mainly, I tried running dhclient and got the message that it was already running. So I did killall dhclient and ran it again, and got this output:

                  DHCPREQUEST on re0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
                  DHCPREQUEST on re0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
                  re0 link state up -> down
                  re0 link state down -> up
                  DHCPREQUEST on re0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
                  DHCPREQUEST on re0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
                  re0 link state up -> down
                  DHCPDISCOVER on re0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 7
                  re0 link state down -> up
                  DHCPREQUEST on re0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
                  DHCPREQUEST on re0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
                  DHCPDISCOVER on re0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 6
                  DHCPREQUEST on re0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
                  DHCPDISCOVER on re0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 7
                  DHCPDISCOVER on re0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 7
                  DHCPDISCOVER on re0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 6
                  re0 link state up -> down
                  re0 link state down -> up
                  DHCPREQUEST on re0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
                  DHCPDISCOVER on re0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 7
                  Terminated
                  

                  I don't know enough to say whether this is relevant though.

                  @Gertjan I ran top while this was happening as well. The output is below, but to my eyes the resource usage looks normal:

                  [2.4.5-RELEASE][admin@pfSense.home]/root: top
                  last pid: 22425;  load averages:  0.28,  0.25,  0.10                                            up 1+23:12:44  13:20:10
                  57 processes:  1 running, 56 sleeping
                  CPU:  0.1% user,  0.0% nice,  0.3% system,  0.9% interrupt, 98.7% idle
                  Mem: 72M Active, 228M Inact, 449M Wired, 120M Buf, 3100M Free
                  Swap: 4096M Total, 4096M Free
                  
                    PID USERNAME    THR PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE   C   TIME    WCPU COMMAND
                  27368 root         17  20    0   187M 53864K uwait   1   2:14   0.72% telegraf
                  35787 www           1  20    0 20916K 15128K kqread  1   3:48   0.22% haproxy
                  19593 root          1  20    0  9508K  5396K select  1   0:15   0.12% miniupnpd
                  54581 root          1  20    0  6408K  2476K select  2   0:33   0.09% syslogd
                  17952 root          1  20    0  7820K  3328K CPU3    3   0:00   0.04% top                                               59366 root          1  20    0 12592K  5884K select  2   0:09   0.03% ntpd
                  93986 unbound       4  20    0 87336K 63088K kqread  3   0:03   0.03% unbound
                  41692 root          1  20    0  6964K  2736K bpf     0   0:43   0.03% filterlog
                  30708 avahi         1  20    0  7512K  3488K select  3   0:35   0.02% avahi-daemon
                  58150 root          1  20    0 23680K  8668K kqread  3   0:28   0.02% nginx
                  67981 _dhcp         1  20    0  6456K  2436K select  2   0:00   0.01% dhclient
                  98132 root          1  20    0 12964K  7824K select  1   0:00   0.01% sshd
                  36383 root          1  20    0 52216K 35976K nanslp  0   0:12   0.01% php
                  63429 root          5  52    0 11000K  2412K uwait   3   0:00   0.01% dpinger
                    360 root          1  40   20  6752K  2596K kqread  0   0:00   0.00% check_reload_status
                  57863 root          1  20    0 23680K  8680K kqread  1   0:21   0.00% nginx
                  63202 root          1  20    0 10484K  6920K kqread  1   0:02   0.00% lighttpd_pfb
                    345 root          1  20    0 95204K 25764K kqread  1   0:02   0.00% php-fpm
                  46276 root          1  20    0 97384K 36756K wait    2   0:19   0.00% php-fpm
                  54002 root          1  52    0 99628K 40220K lockf   0   0:16   0.00% php-fpm
                  63534 root          1  52    0 99756K 39708K lockf   0   0:11   0.00% php-fpm
                  22725 root          1  52    0 97384K 38448K lockf   3   0:08   0.00% php-fpm
                  98547 root          1  52    0 97384K 37916K wait    3   0:04   0.00% php-fpm
                    868 root          1  52    0 95336K 38196K lockf   3   0:04   0.00% php-fpm
                  88161 root          9  20    0 23956K  3516K uwait   2   0:01   0.00% filterdns
                  58867 root          1  28    0  6376K  2376K nanslp  0   0:00   0.00% cron
                  11084 root          2  20    0 54528K 36336K uwait   1   0:00   0.00% php                                                 418 root          1  20    0  9156K  4976K select  3   0:00   0.00% devd
                  32079 root          1  21    0 97380K 36168K lockf   0   0:00   0.00% php-fpm
                  41452 root          1  20    0 97380K 36172K lockf   2   0:00   0.00% php-fpm
                  42413 root          1  20    0  6192K  1912K nanslp  3   0:00   0.00% minicron
                   8452 root          1  20    0  6196K  2100K kqread  3   0:00   0.00% dhcpleases                                        45487 root          1  52   20  6976K  2768K wait    0   0:00   0.00% sh                                                 8610 dhcpd         1  20    0 16460K 10908K select  0   0:00   0.00% dhcpd
                  14266 root          1  30    0  7280K  3464K pause   2   0:00   0.00% tcsh
                  84475 root          1  52    0  6724K  2732K wait    1   0:00   0.00% login
                  69251 root          1  20    0  6456K  2308K select  0   0:00   0.00% dhclient
                   9023 root          1  20    0 12672K  6904K select  0   0:00   0.00% sshd                                              96842 root          1  52    0  6976K  2848K wait    0   0:00   0.00% sh                                                11069 root          1  52    0  6976K  2724K wait    1   0:00   0.00% sh
                  43008 root          1  20    0  6192K  1912K nanslp  1   0:00   0.00% minicron
                    107 root          1  52    0  6976K  2724K ttyin   3   0:00   0.00% sh
                  

                  @Rico I've disabled the setting as suggested, but I'm just curious what the problem might be with that. Is it because it tries to check for updates when loading the dashboard and that causes it to hang if there is no connection?

                  GertjanG 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • GertjanG
                    Gertjan @bdben
                    last edited by

                    @bdben said in No web GUI when internet is down:

                    re0 link state up -> down
                    re0 link state down -> up

                    Where are the time stamps ?
                    And why is this interface going up and down ? That's not normal at all.
                    These up and down is very close to : disconnect cable, connect cable.
                    That's always followed by a DHCP sequence, the DHCP clients is paid to do so, that part looks ok.

                    Bad NIC ? (It's a Realtek so who would be surprised ?)
                    Bad cable ?
                    Bad NIC on the other side ?
                    Gateway monitoring takes the interface down logically because WAN connection is bad ?

                    No "help me" PM's please. Use the forum, the community will thank you.
                    Edit : and where are the logs ??

                    B 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • B
                      bdben @Gertjan
                      last edited by

                      @Gertjan said in No web GUI when internet is down:

                      Where are the time stamps ?

                      It didn't print out any time stamps, but this took roughly 30 seconds I'd guess. To be clear, this isn't a log file, rather the actual output to stdout from the command.

                      @Gertjan said in No web GUI when internet is down:

                      Bad NIC ? (It's a Realtek so who would be surprised ?)

                      I had wondered this myself - the WAN interface is the builtin NIC on the motherboard, while the others are on a PCIe Intel NIC that I got on ebay. Might be worth switching my LAN interface to one of those then? It's also possible that the cable is bad. I don't have a cable tester unfortunately, but I can try swapping some cables around and see what happens.

                      I'm also not really sure how to test whether or not @NollipfSense's suggestion is working other than by waiting. I haven't been able to reproduce the error deliberately, it's just something that happens every couple of days.

                      NollipfSenseN 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • NollipfSenseN
                        NollipfSense @bdben
                        last edited by

                        @bdben said in No web GUI when internet is down:

                        I'm also not really sure how to test whether or not @NollipfSense's suggestion is working other than by waiting.

                        It's only if you're using a cable modem.

                        pfSense+ 23.09 Lenovo Thinkcentre M93P SFF Quadcore i7 dual Raid-ZFS 128GB-SSD 32GB-RAM PCI-Intel i350-t4 NIC, -Intel QAT 8950.
                        pfSense+ 23.09 VM-Proxmox, Dell Precision Xeon-W2155 Nvme 500GB-ZFS 128GB-RAM PCIe-Intel i350-t4, Intel QAT-8950, P-cloud.

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • B
                          bdben
                          last edited by

                          @NollipfSense I am using a cable modem, so I guess I'll just wait and see if the issue returns. Hopefully not!

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