Pfsense Crashing - Watchdog Timeout??
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I have been running pfsense on Nuc mini PC with Intel N3150 with 2GB ram and 32GB SSD. It has run flawless for over a year. Just recently with it running 2.4.0 and then upgraded to 2.4.4 it crashes randomly one a week or sometimes 10 times a day.
I did a complete new install of pfsense and it still crashes. It will crash and I have to manually power cycle it.
When it crashes I can still access devices on my wired network by going to their ip address. But I cannot access pfsense box with its internal ip address. My wifi access point also goes down, so all my wireless devices disconnect.
When it crashes I can still use the local terminal.
Here is a copy paste from my logs in pfsense.
I have tried disabling my VPN and pfBlocker NG but it doesn't make a difference.
Any help would be appreciated.
Jan 6 10:37:25 kernel re1: watchdog timeout
Jan 6 10:37:25 kernel re1: link state changed to DOWN
Jan 6 10:37:25 check_reload_status Linkup starting re1
Jan 6 10:37:26 php-fpm 42830 /rc.linkup: DEVD Ethernet detached event for lan
Jan 6 10:37:26 check_reload_status Reloading filter
Jan 6 10:37:29 check_reload_status Linkup starting re1
Jan 6 10:37:29 kernel re1: link state changed to UP
Jan 6 10:37:30 php-fpm 350 /rc.linkup: DEVD Ethernet attached event for lan
Jan 6 10:37:30 php-fpm 350 /rc.linkup: HOTPLUG: Configuring interface lan
Jan 6 10:37:30 php-fpm 350 /rc.linkup: Gateway, none 'available' for inet6, use the first one configured. 'WAN_DHCP6' -
Looks like a hardware problem with that network interface. Especially if it persists after a reinstall.
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I guess I could get a new network card and replace that one and see if it works. I was thinking it was hardware as well.
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It skipped my mind that my nic cards are hard wired onto my mini motherboard. So I switched my Wan(re0) and Lan(re1) assignments to Wan(re1) and Lan(re0). Mabey this will fix it.
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Since it's a Realtek NIC you could try the alternative driver there:
https://forum.netgate.com/topic/135850/official-realtek-driver-binary-1-95-for-2-4-4-releaseSomething that just started happening after running fine does look like a hardware issue though unless you just started using some feature like VLANs perhaps. Something that might try to use NIC hardware differently.
Steve
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Thanks for link to the forum.
I will have to give this new driver a try if I continue to have the timeouts. This forum sounds exactly like my issue.
So far after swapping the lan and wan ports I have had no issues. Running iperf for 30 mins maxing out my lan speeds and maxing my ISP speeds has produced no errors.
Previously I could crash the system doing a large fast download with wireless on a pixel 2 xl. (this pixel 2 xl was the one device that could always crash pfsense, and it was downloading fortnite on one of the kids phones at 100mpbs maxing out my ISP speed)
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@choder If you have Realtek NICs, I would strongly advise using the 1.95 Realtek driver. The watchdog timeouts are exactly what is known to occur with the Realtek driver built in to FreeBSD. And it's the sort of thing that may seem fine for a while and then bite you. That said, in my experience with this issue, I don't think it would ever survive running 30 mins of maxed out iperf. So you may be fine, but I guess my feeling is that you would only stand to benefit by loading the 1.95 driver.
