Netgate Discussion Forum
    • Categories
    • Recent
    • Tags
    • Popular
    • Users
    • Search
    • Register
    • Login

    DHCP lease screen not loading

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved DHCP and DNS
    123 Posts 30 Posters 57.5k Views
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as topic
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with topic management privileges can see it.
    • GertjanG
      Gertjan @ANRt
      last edited by

      @anrt said in DHCP lease screen not loading:

      Update from console): Another instance is already running. . . Aborting!

      I've seen that before : a blocked 'pkg' process.
      The forum has words about that.

      No "help me" PM's please. Use the forum, the community will thank you.
      Edit : and where are the logs ??

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • C
        chance @Gertjan
        last edited by

        I've got the same DHCP page won't load issue. I just recently did the upgrade to 2.5.0(yesterday), and the problem appeared today. Did anyone ever figure out what was causing the issue?

        P A 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • P
          plague311 @chance
          last edited by plague311

          @chance I just checked mine again and it's back to having the same problem. I don't have much more to offer, I'm just going to move DHCP off of pfsense.

          I don't buy that there's some random device on my network that's having DHCP issues that somehow popped up with pfsense 2.5, given I had no issues at all previously (for years). If there's a problem, the problem is with whatever change they made in pfsense 2.5, not with one of my devices. If you check the forums the 2.5 update has been painful for a lot of people. Tons of stuff broke like VPN's, and the issues referred to in this thread. I'd just revert back if you still have that option. Wait for netgate to figure out what they did.

          dhcpleases.JPG

          As you can see, my leases files aren't even to 10k. There's no way my DHCP scope or my leases are the issue.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • A
            ANRt @chance
            last edited by

            @chance I got mine working for a while by completely reinstalling pfSense and not using that system for anything but DHCP and the basic firewall (no packages, no certificate creation, no DNS, no port forwarding).

            That ended up not working after around five days and the page was timing out again. So, I moved to Opnsense and haven't had any issues.

            I'll probably be back to pfSense a few months after the next update comes out, but this has been a terrible experience.

            P 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • P
              plague311 @ANRt
              last edited by

              @anrt said in DHCP lease screen not loading:

              @chance I got mine working for a while by completely reinstalling pfSense and not using that system for anything but DHCP and the basic firewall (no packages, no certificate creation, no DNS, no port forwarding).

              That ended up not working after around five days and the page was timing out again. So, I moved to Opnsense and haven't had any issues.

              I'll probably be back to pfSense a few months after the next update comes out, but this has been a terrible experience.

              I spun up a VM using OPNSense as well, and it was a decent piece of software. Like you, whatever the problematic device on my network was didn't seem to effect OPNSense. If the screen was more of an issue I'd probably switch over as well.

              C 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • C
                chance @plague311
                last edited by

                Unfortunately I'm in "production" so I can't switch out to Opnsense without a huge change control and testing. My installation is also fairly complicated as it is a private ISP for a neighborhood. I guess that will teach me to upgrade... ever... even with the large amount of testing I did there are still minor things like this that will come up no matter what.

                P A 3 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • P
                  plague311 @chance
                  last edited by

                  @chance said in DHCP lease screen not loading:

                  Unfortunately I'm in "production" so I can't switch out to Opnsense without a huge change control and testing. My installation is also fairly complicated as it is a private ISP for a neighborhood. I guess that will teach me to upgrade... ever... even with the large amount of testing I did there are still minor things like this that will come up no matter what.

                  If you look up at my post, I found that deleting the leases files got it working for a few days. I can test it on my home environment by deleting those files again and see if the screen will load. It might not be a perfect resolution but it might be a bit of a work around until netgate gets it figured out.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • A
                    ANRt @chance
                    last edited by

                    @chance Can you manage a rollback? It's a bit nuclear, but if everything was working on 2.45 then maybe sitting on that until the current development version is stable would be the best option.

                    C 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • C
                      chance @ANRt
                      last edited by

                      @anrt

                      I probably can, but it's been a little while since the upgrade, and I "think" I can live with this for the time being... Here's hoping it makes 2.5.1...

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • P
                        plague311 @chance
                        last edited by

                        @chance I deleted the files again, restarted the DHCP service through the DHCP leases screen and it is backup and running. So I can confirm that deleting those files and restarting the service will bring up that page again.

                        That being said, after restarting the service the only leases that showed up in that screen were the static IPs. I didn't get time to test if I had to renew each dynamic device to see if it would show up, but when I loaded up my test VM it grabbed a DHCP address and then showed up in the list.

                        I hope this helps a bit.

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • P
                          plague311
                          last edited by plague311

                          I'll explain what I did in case someone stumbles across this thread looking for a work around.

                          I run pfsense as a VM on my home server (just an old dell R810, nothing special), running ESXi. I opened up the console through the ESXi webGUi (SSH'ing in would do the same thing), pressed 8 (for shell) on the machine, typed

                          cd /var/dhcpd/var/db

                          Just to make sure I was in the right location I performed the

                          ls -lh

                          It's all lowercase but for clarification I typed LS -LH just so there's no confusion. After I confirmed that the files were in that directory I typed:

                          rm dhcpd.leases dhcpd.leases~

                          The one with the ~ is the active leases file. I deleted both just to be safe. I then opened up the webGUI for pfsense. I navigated to status > dhcp leases and restarted the service. Those showed all of my static IPs, and then the dynamics started filling in as my leases expired.

                          I hope this helps someone.

                          GertjanG 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • GertjanG
                            Gertjan @plague311
                            last edited by

                            @plague311 said in DHCP lease screen not loading:

                            The one with the ~ is the active leases file.

                            The one with the ~ is always older, this the backup.

                            Instead of deleting file, you might try this :

                            Go here :
                            /usr/local/www/

                            Make a backup of this file :
                            /usr/local/www/status_dhcp_leases.php

                            Edit the file - using a text edit like Notepad++ - or use nano on pfSense itself :
                            /usr/local/www/status_dhcp_leases.php

                            Example :
                            0308c350-213a-4020-a0d4-aa449f419948-image.png

                            Yo see the

                            echo "1 ";
                            
                            echo "2 ";
                            

                            etc.
                            I inserted ?

                            here they are :

                            0dc7070b-c638-457e-bd0b-69d777fd49d3-image.png

                            add some of these "echo" lines, and look at the DHCP status page in the GUI.

                            If your browser reaches (shows) echo "1" but not echo "2", you know thing start to go wrong here :

                            03311360-4aab-45b6-b517-cc0da917eafa-image.png

                            No "help me" PM's please. Use the forum, the community will thank you.
                            Edit : and where are the logs ??

                            C P 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • C
                              chance @Gertjan
                              last edited by

                              @gertjan

                              If the page doesn't load the echo's will never display.

                              I think you would have to wrap each relevant block in try/catch to see if you could get it to skip the part that errors and print the debug statement (echo "block A skipped").

                              I don't really know how php behaves though, so take that FWIW.

                              GertjanG 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • P
                                plague311 @Gertjan
                                last edited by

                                @gertjan When those lease files get deleted the screen works, but as chance mentioned when it's not loading, it's not loading anything. It just gives that nginx error and there's nothing. I don't know that this really helps track down an issue.

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • GertjanG
                                  Gertjan @chance
                                  last edited by Gertjan

                                  @chance said in DHCP lease screen not loading:

                                  If the page doesn't load the echo's will never display.

                                  Like rename or delete this file :
                                  /usr/local/www/status_dhcp_leases.php
                                  ?
                                  We all ought to have the same file, and believe me : it loads.

                                  @chance said in DHCP lease screen not loading:

                                  try/catch

                                  Ho, ho, .... just keep it easy ;)
                                  I advise to use 'echo x";' which needs just some edit / cut paste skills. Try/catch needs some real PHP skills.

                                  Another option : some one send me over - with a protected paste.bin page - his dhcpdleases file.
                                  Then I should be able to read it ? not be able to read it ? = seeing it as this file is used to create the DHCP Status page.
                                  The thing is : no one communicates these files that "don't work".
                                  If the issue is related to these files ....

                                  edit : but ok, go : implement try catch blocks and tell us where things go wrong.

                                  No "help me" PM's please. Use the forum, the community will thank you.
                                  Edit : and where are the logs ??

                                  C 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                  • C
                                    chance @Gertjan
                                    last edited by chance

                                    @gertjan

                                    I may just build a test PHP file from a copy of the existing one that I can call directly from command line and figure out where it's stopping. I do have fairly extensive development skills, just not with PHP (which I haven't used in the last 15 years since I was working with PBX systems)

                                    When mine starts failing again, I will do something as described above.

                                    EDIT: I made a copy of the dhcp leases php file and executed it with

                                    php status_dhcp_leases2.php

                                    It returns a whole html doc to the terminal, so I should be able to figure out which call is causing the issue.

                                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 4
                                    • K
                                      krinn
                                      last edited by

                                      Still Facing the issue after upgrade to 2.5.1, tried clearing the dhcp leases file and still the problem persist, able to view the dhcp leases through command prompt but GUI is not available. It would be very helpful if the someone who has sorted this issue can help.

                                      GertjanG 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                      • GertjanG
                                        Gertjan @krinn
                                        last edited by Gertjan

                                        @krinn said in DHCP lease screen not loading:

                                        tried clearing the dhcp leases file and still the problem persist, able to view the dhcp leases through command prompt but GUI is not available.

                                        What does show up when you visit that page ?

                                        "Status > DHCP Leases" or https://............/status_dhcp_leases.php

                                        Go to your browser dev mode ( Firefox : Ctrl-Shift - i and then select Network - and hit F5 )

                                        No "help me" PM's please. Use the forum, the community will thank you.
                                        Edit : and where are the logs ??

                                        D 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                        • D
                                          DrQuinn24 @Gertjan
                                          last edited by

                                          @gertjan Here is what is seen when using the instruction for Firefox when choosing Status/DHCP leases:pfsense.png

                                          I have had the same issue since upgrading to 2.5 ( currently on 2.5.1). The only major change prior to 2.5 that I can recall on my system was installing the NextDNS cli.

                                          C 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                          • C
                                            chance @DrQuinn24
                                            last edited by

                                            @drquinn24 It's timing out just like it was for everyone above. the solution is to delete your leases database and restart the dhcp service. That "solves" the problem for an undetermined amount of time, but at the cost of you now don't know what leases are out.

                                            Nothing in 2.5.1 is related to this issue, and I'm not even sure it's going to be a priority for netgate anytime soon.

                                            K 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                            • First post
                                              Last post
                                            Copyright 2025 Rubicon Communications LLC (Netgate). All rights reserved.