pfSense crashes, how to troubleshoot?
-
I'm running pfSense (2.4.5) on a Zotac Mini PC with 2 physical LAN Ports.
Every now and then the system crashes (is not reachable on the network anymore, however not totally crashed, it shut's down normally by pressing the power button).
I can reproduce the situation by forcing heavy traffic thru the pfSense, however I don't know how to start troubleshooting this.
On LAN1 I have my WAN connected to ISP
On LAN2 is my local network, with the Trusted Zone directly on the eth-interface and some more zones on VLAN's.This is how I can reproduce the crash: In one of these additional Zones via VLAN I have a Veeam Backup server. I let this server run a backup job from a VMware ESXi Host to a QNAP NAS on the Trusted Zone (only route is thru the pfSense then). Once it starts transfering data it takes only a couple of seconds for the crash to happen.
I searched on google for similar problems and found something about an issue with Realtek network devices. Indeed theres some other heavy traffic that does not crashes the pfSense, for example I can run a Time Machine Backup on a Macbook (connected by wire) to a FreeNAS VM running on the VMware host (which is a Dell Server with Intel LAN devices). Of course, I have no idea if this is the same source of problem in my case.
-
Hi,
Troubleshooting network problems : you shouldn't be using them to get needed info. Which means you have to use most important interface : the console access. That one will stay functional when an interface goes down. You'll be able to check the logs and other system specs - the place where all the answers are. You'll see that the system isn't down at all, most probably only the NIC (driver).
Also : is your WAN not a Realteck ? Then swap WAN and LAN interfaces. Realteck NIC's are strange animals. I'm using several of them right now. Other, probably most, came in from Amazon, lasted a day, and are piling up in some box somewhere, being completely useless. You shouldn't doing complicated things with them like "heavy load" and VLAN's at the same time ... that's asking way to much.
Btw : have a look in this forum. There are post that mention an alternative Realteck driver with rather good results, better as the build in stock driver.