Unreliable pfsense reboot Hyperv 2012

Actionhenk

Hi, I frequently reboot my pfsense box Running on hyperv server 2012std and every 4/5 reboots it wont start. Pfsense freezes during boot, always when it is trying to mount devices such as dvd drive. I removed everything I can from the machine settings but it still happens. I guess its noy able to mount the disk, im not sure because i dont have the knowledge to troubleshoot it with freebsd. I tried installing ufs and zfs. Zfs seems to freeze up alot more. This never happened with pfsense 2.3.

How can I find out what is causing this ? Anyone with similair issues ?

Thanks !

johnpoz

Why would you be rebooting it so much is the first question… But the fix for esxi has been setting

configure the VM to use the syscons console rather than vt by editing /boot/loader.conf.local and adding this line:
kern.vty=sc

this information was in the release notes..

Its related to this
https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=217282
panics during bootup due to a race between vt_change_font() and termcn_cnputc()

Actionhenk

Thanks should have read the notes first, I will try it.

red_cat1930

I confirm that 2.4.0 as VM has problem with reboot on Hyper-V 2012R2
No matter which scenario is used for guest VM of 2.4.0 (save state, shutdown guest), after reboot guest makes output that filesystem was unmounted incorrectly. After checking everythig works good. But it's abnormal.

I've made several tests with snapshots and 2 different VM.

if VM is 2.3.X it correctly saves state (vm stops reply, hyper-v host continues reply to ping for a while before reboot), hyper-v hosts reboots, VM 2.3.X correctly restores.
if VM is 2.4.0 it incorrectly saves states (vm continues reply with host till the host's last ping reply before reboot), hyper-v hosts reboots, VM 2.4.0 starts like the power was failed.

bimmerdriver

I have two pfsense vms running on a hyper-v 2012r2 server. One is a test system that I update and reboot frequently. I am not noticing any problems rebooting.

red_cat1930

@bimmerdriver:

I have two pfsense vms running on a hyper-v 2012r2 server. One is a test system that I update and reboot frequently. I am not noticing any problems rebooting.

Today my test VM was upgraded to 2.4.1
No problem with reboot.
But when you reboot host, VM on hyper-v 2012R2 does not save state. After Hyper-v hosts reboots the VM pfsense 2.4.1 starts as it was powered off.
The 2.3.4 on the same host restores states successfully.
Can you test this scenario, please?

red_cat1930

2.4.2 still cannot be saved on host reboot.
2.3.X works perfeclty on the same hyper-v host (2012 R2)

I don't know is it problem of hyper-v, pfsense or freebsd 11.1?
not really big problem because host reboot is always under control.

provels

@red_cat1930:

2.4.2 still cannot be saved on host reboot.
2.3.X works perfeclty on the same hyper-v host (2012 R2)

I don't know is it problem of hyper-v, pfsense or freebsd 11.1?
not really big problem because host reboot is always under control.

Having a similar problem here with 2.4.2_1 on 2012R2, but I just configured the host to shutdown pfSense rather than trying to save state. I also use fixed memory rather than dynamic, since it (either FreeBSD or Hyper-V) doesn't seem to honor it. I've recently had pfSense marking the disk as dirty and going into a reboot loop after recognizing the hn interfaces. Restore a checkpoint and back to working. Not complaining, just offering feedback.

ha100

I'm having the dirty disk problem after I reboot my Hyperv 2012 R2 host server as well. What is the best course of action?

provels

Just adding this in case it helps someone now or later. I have still had problems with dirty disks and unable to mount problems in my 2012R2 VM, even though I had set the VM to shut down when the server is rebooted rather than save. At times it would just choke and leave me at (I think) a db> prompt. I found this info at Altaro.com:

https://www.altaro.com/hyper-v/extending-hyper-vs-guest-grace-period-host-shutdown/

I changed the associated registry entry to 600 and have rebooted several times without issue. It doesn't really wait 10 minutes to restart, but as soon as it sees all machines are stopped it proceeds with the reboot, rather than just forcing the machines off after the stock timeout of 2 minutes (at least I think that's what's happening :P). I also staggered the VM startups to prevent resource contention.

If interested, they also have a backup program for VMs that is free for 2 VMs (no affiliation, just looks pretty good).

https://www.altaro.com/hyper-v-backup/

YonNomNom 0

Hey I wanted to say that I was also experiencing this issue and it looks like it can be worked around by disabling VSS (Backup) in integration tools on the Hyper-V VM settings. FreeBSD also exhibits the same issue and only the bellow is logged before the power is removed by Hyper-v.

freebsd kernel: hvvss0: Unknown opt from host: 4

I hope this helps someone else as it took me a few days to work it out.

Regards, Yon

zacha

Yon,

thank you so much... I was looking around for an answer everywhere for hours. Noone knew why FreeBSD based machines would always start from scratch. When you manually save the state of your vm hyper-v does it just fine, but when rebooting it sits there till $timeout and then nukes the vm. No idea why this actually happens. But disabling vss did the trick, reboot of host+guest in seconds to previous state!. (hyper-v-server 2016 testbench here)