SG-1100 no internet, no web UI, SSH OK

brightwolf · Mar 12, 2019, 5:37 PM

I have been running my SG-1100 for over a month now, resulting in stable and fast internet in my home. Since today, suddenly, with no change made in the past week, SG-1100 stopped serving internet. SG-1100 is up with all the correct green LEDs, but no internet is available.The login screen shows but the web interface never loads after logon (Chrome keeps spinning). I am able to login through SSH and tried reroot and reboot to no avail.

Help! What could be causing this, how to diagnose and what is the best resolution?

[EDIT] I am running Steve Gibson's three router set up with SG-1100 serving my secure network and Draytek Vigor serving my unsecure network. Both are connected to my ISP gateway which is a Fritz!Box. My guest wifi network (hosted by Draytek Vigor) is working, so it is not the ISP connection that is causing this.

brightwolf · Mar 12, 2019, 5:56 PM

Restored the last safety backup (01) through SSH console. That caused the system to work again! However, only for a very brief period of time: after a few minutes it stopped working again. I suspect the auto-update process is causing this by installing a faulty update?

0) Logout (SSH only)                  9) pfTop
1) Assign Interfaces                 10) Filter Logs
2) Set interface(s) IP address       11) Restart webConfigurator
3) Reset webConfigurator password    12) PHP shell + pfSense tools
4) Reset to factory defaults         13) Update from console
5) Reboot system                     14) Disable Secure Shell (sshd)
6) Halt system                       15) Restore recent configuration
7) Ping host                         16) Restart PHP-FPM
8) Shell

Enter an option: 13

Another instance is already running... Aborting!

KOM · Mar 12, 2019, 6:03 PM

Nothing in pfSense gets auto-updated. All updates to the base and any packages must be manually triggered.

Another instance is already running... Aborting!

Now that is interesting. I don't think I've seen that before.

Grimson · Mar 12, 2019, 6:19 PM

After restoring the config pfSense will (re)install all packages and restore their configuration. So I guess you have either a faulty package, or a bad configuration on one package.

I would do a fresh install to make sure the system is clean and then restore the config area by area and watch closely when it breaks, do the "Package Manager" last. This should give you a clue on where the error is.

brightwolf · Mar 12, 2019, 8:56 PM

OK thanks for the tips! Will save the backups so I can reuse them after the fresh install. Will report my progress and findings back here.

brightwolf · Mar 12, 2019, 10:11 PM

Total failure. After a few retries my latest one caused DHCP not to work anymore, so I cannot enter the system at all anymore. I can connect through console but none of my known passwords is now accepted by the system. Locked out. How can I do a complete reinstall of SG-1100?

brightwolf · Mar 12, 2019, 10:47 PM

@grimson said in SG-1100 no internet, no web UI, SSH OK:

After restoring the config pfSense will (re)install all packages and restore their configuration. So I guess you have either a faulty package, or a bad configuration on one package.

I think this may be true but the question is, how did this occur? The last edit I made was last weekend and was adding one IP address to my "do not route through the VPN" alias. No change was made today, yet it decided somewhere mid morning CET, when I was at work and no-one was doing any change or work to it (because no-one but me knows how to edit it in the first place) to stop working. And now it's in an unknown state, not accepting any of my known last passwords ... did I brick it? Did it brick itself? What to do?

Gertjan · Mar 12, 2019, 10:58 PM

Use this one :
@brightwolf said in SG-1100 no internet, no web UI, SSH OK:

Reset to factory defaults

Which means : you have to 'redo' your WAN setup. This won't take long, because you have an upstream router (The Fritzbox).
If needed, set your LAN network if it wasn't the default 192.168.1.0/24
Your up, your network is fine.
!! Do not import your back config !!
From now on, it should stay up no matter what. If you can, test drive this 'bare' situation a couple of days.

After that, if you used other settings, apply them one by one. And take pauses, test-drive every situation.
Take spare config backups so it's easy to go step back fast.

Remember : going to default and importing the config backupright away will install all packages that were present, and apply settings to these packages. If one was faulty (breaks networking, whatever) your back to square one in a couple of minutes,

jahonix · Mar 12, 2019, 11:57 PM

You can use a text editor and delete all package infos from your config.xml before restoring.

brightwolf · Mar 13, 2019, 8:23 AM

Thanks for the tips but I cannot enter the console menu anymore: it won't let me in, each password I enter is denied. The default password is denied, and all passwords I used with it are denied. How can I factory reset without entering console?

Grimson · Mar 13, 2019, 8:46 AM

https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/solutions/sg-1100/

brightwolf · Mar 13, 2019, 10:22 AM

That looks promising, thanks! Will try tonight and report back here on my progress.

brightwolf · Mar 26, 2019, 1:34 PM

Finally I am getting time to re-install (read: unbrick) my SG-1100. However, as it turns out, I need to request support for an install image. Since I did not buy support as I did not expect that I would need it, I am in trouble again. Is there some other way to obtain this image? Can I use a generic image? Can somebody share the SG-1100 image with me?

All hints/tips/tricks welcome.

Gertjan · Mar 26, 2019, 11:42 AM

I do no own a netgate device, but I'm pretty sure that when you buy a Netgate device, you have access to some netgate's support portal like https://go.netgate.com/support/login where you can download the latest pfSense firmware. For life.

Note : you have to create your access yourself.

JeGr · Mar 26, 2019, 1:34 PM

@brightwolf said in SG-1100 no internet, no web UI, SSH OK:

Finally I am getting time to re-install (read: unbrick) my SG-1100. However, as it turns out, I need to request support for an install image. Since I did not buy support as I did not expect that I would need it, I am in trouble again. Is there some other way to obtain this image? Can I use a generic image? Can somebody share the SG-1100 image with me?

All hints/tips/tricks welcome.

Contact the official support as it is stated in: https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/solutions/sg-1100/reinstall-pfsense.html

stephenw10 · Mar 26, 2019, 8:53 PM

Yes, just open a ticket if you have not already and we will get that to you ASAP.

Steve

jahonix · Mar 26, 2019, 9:40 PM

@brightwolf said in SG-1100 no internet, no web UI, SSH OK:

Can I use a generic image?

No!
Available generic/CE images are x64 only.
The SG-1100 is based on ARM architecture and needs a totally different image.

brightwolf · May 8, 2019, 7:35 PM

Thanks everyone for the feedback. I created an account and asked for the SG-1100 image on 15:42 yesterday. At 15:43 the helpdesk provided me with the image. Nothing to complain about.

brightwolf · May 8, 2019, 7:36 PM

So finally I came around to reinstalling my SG-1100. I had no time earlier. Here's what I did so far.

I flashed the supplied image file to a USB flash drive with Etcher, connected to console and started the SG-1100. Following the reinstallation guide, I had it up and running in a vanilla state again 10 minutes later. Then I connected and restored my previous backup file without the 'packages' parts (because those were likely to be the root cause of the issue causing all this) and that worked too. Finally, I hooked it into my network again but.. this is causing some headaches. It just refuses me to connect. I do not even see the login screen. It may be due to some network interference, IP conflict, I do not know, but after spending some time I decided to do one other reinstallation and then reconfigure the whole thing from scratch. It will take some time (openVPN, firewall rules and all) but I will also learn from it. However, that will have to wait till the weekend, for now I had enough pfSense for one evening...

brightwolf · May 13, 2019, 5:16 PM

Confirmed, my wireless router which I hooked up to the SG-1100 indirectly through my switch, had the same IP address. Changed that one and after that, it worked flawlessly.