Pfsense reboots after connecting to wireless interface

hart02

I recently added a wifi interface to my router. it is a edimax ew-7318usg card. when i try connecting to it the router reboots. any gui configuration i tried of does nothing.I did all this according to this http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Access_Point2

Tick enable optional interface 1.

General configuration

Static not DHCP

MAC address and MTU – unconfigured

IP configuration

Bridge with LAN – therefore no IP address and no gateway

FTP Helper - I left it on

Wireless Configuration

Standard - 802.11g (pretty much most wireless cards at the moment - 2007)

mode – Access point

802.11g OFDM Protection Mode - Protection Mode off (This mode is relevant if you have 802.11b traffic on your wireless network - if you don't then its probably better to turn it off)

SSID – mywirelessnetwork

802.11g only- box ticked

Allow intra-BSS communication – not ticked

Enable WME – box ticked

Enable Hide SSID – not ticked but probably useful for some security after you've got it working

Transmit power – 99

Channel - auto

Distance setting – empty

WEP – not enabled (Prefer WPA encryption if you can – note windows xp pre sp2 can't do WPA)

WPA – enable WPA and enter your pre shared key (obviously use a strong password/key)

WPA Mode – Both (WPA worked as well but WPA2 didn't with windows standard wireless client)

WPA Key Management Mode – Preshared key

Authentication – Open System Authentication

WPA Pairwise – TKIP

Key Rotation – 60 (default)

Master Key Regeneration – 3600 (default)

Strict Key Regeneration – not set

Enable IEEE802.1X – not (to other readers – what does this do?)

DHCP client configuration – hostname – not set
[edit]
DHCP

This configuration did not require any settings for either DHCP server or DHCP relay as this was provided by the DHCP server on the LAN and once the wireless encryption protocol is negotiated, the client is allocated an IP address and gateway and WINS server from the LAN DHCP server.
[edit]
Firewall Rules

Make sure that you put a rule on the LAN interface to let traffic through and also on the OPT1 interface as we've enabled packet filtering on bridged interfaces in the System Advanced menu. This will let you control the traffic on the wireless interface if you so desire (not what I wanted to do).

The rules I utilise with this configuration are:

LAN Interface

Protocols: *

Source: Lan net

Port: *

Destination: *

Port: *

Gateway: *

Opt1 Interface

Protocols: *

Source: *

Port: *

Destination: *

Port: *

Gateway: *

Obviously this is wide open so you can put more restrictive rules in to your heart's content if you want.

I know it is compatible. I am obviously stumped as to whit is happening ???. Help would be nice.

wallabybob

Just before the pfSense box reboots it MAY output some text to the console. If you can, capture that (even deliberately provoke it to reboot a few times to see if you get a consistent story) and post it here. That text may give some clues to the problem.

hart02

okay.took me awhile
here is the output

fault trap 12: page fault while in kernel mode 
cpuid = 0 ,apic id = 00  fault virtual address = 0x12 fault code = supervisor read : page not present instruction pointer =0x20:0xc07286aa
stack pointer= 0x28 :0xe27bebe8 
frame pointer = 0x28:0xe27bec00
code segment= base 0x0 limit  0xfffff
type 0x1b=dpl 0 pres 1 def32 gran 1
processor eflag =interrupt enabled, resume, IOPL = 0
current process = 24 (irq10: ohci 0)
trap  number =12 
panic :page fault
cpuid=0
uptime=11m8s
cannot dump: no dump device defined

And sometimes it randomly reboots with the same message even when i did not connect to it (someone else maybe nextdoor.)

wallabybob

This type of crash is commonly due to accessing a data structure at an invalid address.

What version are you running (output of uname -a command)?

Is your wireless device a USB device? (The process running at the time of the crash was associated with a USB driver, though this may be entirely coincidental.)

Have you tried version 1.2.3? It known that a number of device drivers work better in that version than in earlier versions.

hart02

it should be 1.2.2 and it says

$ uname -a

FreeBSD pfsense.local 7.0-RELEASE-p8 FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE-p8 #0: Thu Jan  8 22:07:30 EST 2009     sullrich@freebsd7-releng_1_2_1.pfsense.org:/usr/obj.pfSense/usr/src/sys/pfSense.7  i386

but it says I are on the latest version in the firmware menu.

wallabybob

Please try 1.2.3. Though its marked "prerelease" the developers consider it "production ready" - see http://blog.pfsense.org/?p=377

You can download 1.2.3 from http://snapshots.pfsense.org/FreeBSD7/RELENG_1_2/

prophecy

i just upgraded to pfSense-Full-Update-1.2.3-20090407-1323 from 1.2.2 and i'm having the same problem of the pfsense machine rebooting autorandomagically. It most often occurs after wpa is enabled but has also happened when I disabled/enabled the OPT1 (wifi) interface. also using an EDI card. EW7128G

I have no idea why there isnt a simpler method of getting errors and logs after catastrophic failures such as this, but i sure wish there was. Inducing the failure several times so the error can be written down seems a bit ridiculous. dmesg would be beautiful

medisoft

same for me, after some minutes I'm conneted to wireless pfsense reboots, i tested with wpa, wpa2, wep128 and without any encoding, and is the same, with 1.2.2

my card is an USB CWD-854 with rt2501 chip.

Grim0x

By router, I assume you mean A PF-based PC.

I've had similar problems to the one you're describing.

I can think of 2 things that would cause that.

Radio signal can cause a PC to be unstable!
Inside computers, on the motherboard and on many cards, there are CLOCK GENERATORS. And these things HATE external radio waves/magnetism. They interfere with their frequency, and cause instabilities.
As I write this I remember a SCSI adapter card I had once that just hated the PC speaker :D – why cant these house mates all get along in there? : p

I had one system that would crash each time its USB wireless dongle was active in any port in the rear (where it would be close to the motherboard).
Put it on an extension, and it would be fine and dandy.
The clock gen of your mobo, and any ones found on cards hate external frequency interference.
If there are any signal leaks especially, it would cause this (I mean other than the lossy-ness experienced with the best of coax)
Try it in another port, perhaps the change of proximity with the mobo will help.

or
Do you have another system you could try the card in (with PF sense)?
That would give you a good clue of what’s going on.

OR, another CARD you could try in the system.

Now, the other is, believe it or not, partially bad Ram.
I had this one lil system that would do everything else pretty fine, but would reboot whenever it had to do anything with wireless. Happened because everything else that PF sense wanted to accomplish, didn't occupy the lower, faulty spaces of the ram chip, hence there was no instability. But when more resources were called into use, it had to - and thusly, the PC would crash. But this is more unlikely, though possible.

Good luck trouble-shooting.

medisoft

The cards are USB, and are connected with an usb extension, i tested connecting them directly and with 3 meter-long extensions, the same.

Also i have tested in 2 different PCs, with same result :) it's sofware problem, i think some problem with the driver.

I'm going to test it with linux, and see what happens there. The only problem is that vanilla kernels doens't have support for this card in master mode :(

Grim0x

yeah.
And while you're at it, test it out with windoze.
As much as I hate the corporation, they have had the muscles over the years(thanks to their conniving skills) to get much driver support. So see if it hangs up in XP.

medisoft

mmm, but i don't know how to put it in master mode like a access point in windoze….

i tested tonight in monitor mode in linux, and it worked wonderful with aircrack ;)

but right now I can't put it in master mode o linux, only on pfsense....

Grim0x

@medisoft:

mmm, but i don't know how to put it in master mode like a access point in windoze….

i tested tonight in monitor mode in linux, and it worked wonderful with aircrack ;)

but right now I can't put it in master mode o linux, only on pfsense....

what version of linux are you using?

(did you try it in windoze though?)

medisoft

ubuntu 9.01, jaunty…. i tryied with 2x00 new driver kernel, build from git, but it doesn't worked with the USB.

medisoft

Hi!

I'm testing now with another computer, this one has intel chipset, not Via…and it seems to work flawless, with the same USB dongles. it is working at full speed for about 4 hours without a single failure, so I can think that the problem is with USB support of via chipset....

do you know something about that?