No Internet access - how to debug?
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Earlier today I lost Internet access and realised I had no idea about where to start debugging the problem. My pfSense system had an uptime of over 200 days and I hadn't experienced any real problems apart from restricted access due line faults. I don't really do much with pfSense, I just leave it to do basic routing and it works automagically. Today, when I lost Internet access, I realised I hardly knew anything about the capabilities of the pfSense. The lights on the modem/router seemed OK so assumed the Internet connection was active, yet I couldn't my DNS or anything outside my home network. I couldn't work out if the box had hung or if I was under some sort of attack.
Are there any obvious options under Status or Diagnostics which I should select to help me determine where any problems might lie?
I don't really like resorting to the old Windows trick of switching off and switching back on to see if that sorts out the problem.
In the end I went to the console menu and selected reboot and shutdown commenced although I saw no immediate boot up afterwards, although it did boot an hour or so later after disconnecting all the cables reconnecting them and powering on and off a dozen times. I had given up on the box until I heard the pfSense characteristic beep announcing it had booted up successfully.
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System logs are a good place to start.
In my case it's usually a PPPoE problem because my ISP went down.