Bridging WiFi to LAN - What changed?

2low4zero

Hey all,

I'm stumped today.

I've been running the 20090422-1111 snapshot for quite a while now because when I upgrade to something newer Bridge0 stops functioning correctly. From the wireless clients I can touch the various FreeBSD boxen, the other access point, anything really, except the firewall/AP which also happens to be the default gateway.

My config hasn't changed in months and searching the forums hasn't yielded anything obvious so I thought I'd ask around.

What's changed in the way Bridging works between 20090422 and now? The rules seem right, the AP (Atheros chipset) obviously works MOSTLY correctly, but I'm still missing something.

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

–-

Addendum: I suppose I should mention that this install is 2.0/7.2 and that routing works just fine.
So, for the record;

Old Setup - LAN and OPT1 Bridged with interface Bridge0;
Client: 10.1.1.1
AP/Firewall: 10.1.1.254/24
Client can touch everyone else on the network except 10.1.1.254.

New Setup - OPT1 has an interface IP of 10.1.2.254, no Bridge0;
Client: 10.1.2.1
AP/Firewall: 10.1.1.254/24 on LAN, 10.1.2.254/24 on OPT1
Works fine except that now Samba/SMB shares aren't accessible to the wireless clients.
SSH, Nagios (monitoring ICMP) and other protocols work just fine.

I'm still experimenting and surfing the forums for answers. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

2low4zero

Just a brief update;

I messed around with different combinations of IP addresses / netmasks and with running OPT1 unnumbered and so far the secret appears to be enabling STP on Bridge0. I didn't notice any logged errors with BridgeD before but I'm still watching it and experimenting with different configurations. Has anyone else noticed BridgeD silently dying up to now?

Thanks in advance.

2low4zero

Brief update;

Bridging dies arbitrarily on my setup. If I give the WiFi (OPT1) interface an IP address and then delete and recreate the bridge, everything works fine… for a while (some unspecified unit of time or usage). A reboot kills bridging. Deleting and recreating the bridge brings it back.

Again, symptomatically; the wireless clients simply can't touch the firewall/AP. The rest of the network remains available to SSH, SMB shares, ICMP, ...whatever... on the wired network. Nothing shows up in the syslogs regarding BridgeD/Murder/Death/Kill.

Has anyone else experienced this? Or is anyone else interested in particulars for the purposes of debugging?

Or is it just time to separate out my access point from the firewall (which would be REALLY annoying) ?

AhnHEL

In GUI, go to Interfaces/LAN, and then click Save, then Apply. This should fix the bridge issue temporarily until next reboot. Discussed in the following thread:

http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,15468.msg86681.html#msg86681

2low4zero

Booyah! Thanks for the link. For some bizarre reason I knew about clicking on "save" in the interfaces menu but the subject line of that thread was so obtuse that I really don't even remember seeing it in my searches.

So I'm only a little nuts. Good.

Just so long as others are aware and are working toward a fix.

Thanks again.