WAN does not renew after reboot

RyanM

@stephenw10 said in WAN does not renew after reboot:

How exactly is it connected? Just to the main router or via some wifi bridge/extension?

Right now I just have the WAN plugged into a switch on my network at this location. When I ship it home, it will be connected directly to the ethernet cable coming from the fiber optic "modem".

@bingo600 good idea on disconnect/reconnect WAN after boot. I may see if that is a temporary work-around.

@stephenw10 said in WAN does not renew after reboot:

@RyanM When you generated that log was it only pfSense that was rebooted? The upstream router was not? Yet it still hadn't linked by that point?

Steve

Correct, I did not reboot the modem/router. I just booted pfSense.

@Gertjan fascinating write-up on the timing of when dhclient is initialized and when my interfaces are "up".

I am going to try adding that shellcmd package and the suggested command here after boot to see if it helps it pull an IP on this network. And I understand the behavior may be different at the other location, but I would at least like to see it work here first...

RyanM

I used a different cable and am now seeing "1000baseT <full-duplex>" for WAN. I also moved the router to be on a switch connected directly to the Google WiFi that is acting as the router. Now my pfSense router is pulling an IP for the WAN when it boots. I think I am good. Will hopefully be able to ship this box home and get friend to plug it in and get internet at home working again.

stephenw10

Nice result!

RyanM

Did a test where I plugged pfSense router directly into cable modem and was able to connect on mobile phone using VPN. I think I am in business. Thanks for the help.

hoegge

This is still an issue. On both my pfSense boxes, they do not take a WAN address by DHCP if the pfSense box is up before the Fiber modem connection, which is always the case after a power outage. That means you have to drive to the location to press the renew DHCP button. This cannot be right and is a real problem

viragomann

@hoegge
That was discussed here recently. Also there were solutions or workarounds given: https://forum.netgate.com/topic/177429/3100-tries-to-configure-wan-before-fiber-modem-has-uplink/3

hoegge

@viragomann Thanks a lot - I'll try that. Still don't understand, why netgate has not made the client continue retrying, if it has no lease. Must be a common problem, and e.g. in my case, I have to drive 200 km to fix it :-(

hoegge

@viragomann Ah - looks as if this will be fixed in an upcoming release according to https://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/13671#note-2

stephenw10

It's a timing issue. The client cannot run on an interface that has no link so if it detects that it stops. When the NIC sees a link it triggers the client to start and it pulls a lease.
However during boot linkup events are suppressed because they are otherwise run repeatedly as each interface is configured. If your upstream device happens to have a boot delay that means the link comes up between the interface being configured and bootup completing you can hit this problem. It's not a huge window. Most users never see it.
It is a problem though and the patch on that bug report prevents it. Or just set the boot wait time higher to avoid it.

Steve

hoegge

@stephenw10 Thanks - I'll apply the patch - a delay is not really a robust solution, since you never know, what boots when and how fast.

stephenw10

Please leave feedback on that bug report if it works for you.