Netgate pfSense Plus has detected a crash report or programming bug.
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Hi, I really like pfsense and dont want to switch to another firewall. However, I keep getting crash errors which is really frustrating and keep pushing me to look for alternatives. But before i do that I wanted to see if the community can help with this.
I am running pfsense plus 23.05.1-RELEASE (amd64) on vmware. I installed pfsense on baremetal and i still got the same issue so i returned to using virtual pfsense.
The issue is as follows:
I keep getting this errors: [Netgate pfSense Plus has detected a crash report or programming bug. Click here for more information.]
I noticed this normally happens when the firewall is being taxed and i am downloading something.
Crash report.txtI have attached the crash report.
Any assistance appreciated.
TIA
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You are running virtualised on a Jasper Lake CPU so the first thing to do here is make sure you have the latest BIOS/microcode updates to fix the known issues with that setup. Or disable C-states in the host to test.
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Thank you Stephen. I reached out to the seller, they dont have a newer BIOS, however they said to use the latest development version of PFSENSE and this issue should be resolved, but i am bit reluctant to use development version of pfsense on production. Next i disabled c-states but still getting the error. Do you happen to know if the next pfsense release will address this issue as the seller claims? TIA
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pfSense can't change the microcode on the hypervisor so this can only be fixed by updating the hypervisor or BIOS.
Or you can try disabling power saving states in the BIOS so it never hits this. Reports I've read about this seemed to suggest disabling lower C-states was enough but perhaps you need to disable P-states too.
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Thank you Stephen. I have been testing things and disabling C and P states with no luck. would it make a difference if move my pfsense into baremetal on the same mini pc?
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If you can do it that would be a good test certainly.
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@stephenw10 I have reinstalled Pfsense on baremetal from scratch using the latest pfsense usb image (2.7). So far it has been running ok for nearly a day. No issues, even with the C and P states enabled. not clear on why or how, but finger crossed it looks ok now.
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@Meuser i guess i gave my response too soon. Started having the same problem again. Thank you anyways. I think its time to re-consider some other options.
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Whilst running bare metal? Similar crash report(s)?
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@stephenw10 Yes. Running baremetal and got the same error.
Also, not sure if this is any help but, i noticed the unbound dns service was stopped. Each time i cleared the error and tried to start the service, I got the error again right after I tried to start the service.
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What error did you see? Do you have a crash report from the bare-metal install?
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@stephenw10 - I had a HP T620 PLUS Thin Client AMD GX-420CA. I installed Pfsense as baremetal and again having this problem. Two old CPUs and both had the same problem. It makes you wonder if this is feature.
Crash report begins. Anonymous machine information:
amd64
14.0-CURRENT
FreeBSD 14.0-CURRENT #1 plus-RELENG_23_05_1-n256108-459fc493a87: Wed Jun 28 04:26:04 UTC 2023 root@freebsd:/var/jenkins/workspace/pfSense-Plus-snapshots-23_05_1-main/obj/amd64/f2Em2w3l/var/jenkins/workspace/pfSense-Plus-snapshots-23_05_1-main/sources/Crash report details:
PHP Errors:
[30-Aug-2023 08:18:45 Europe/London] PHP Fatal error: Uncaught TypeError: fclose(): Argument #1 ($stream) must be of type resource, bool given in /etc/inc/filter.inc:2825
Stack trace:
#0 /etc/inc/filter.inc(2825): fclose(false)
#1 /etc/inc/filter.inc(411): filter_nat_rules_generate()
#2 /etc/rc.filter_configure_sync(32): filter_configure_sync()
#3 {main}
thrown in /etc/inc/filter.inc on line 2825No FreeBSD crash data found.
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Ah OK. That's a PHP error not a kernel panic like you were seeing when running virtualised.
Any idea what you did to trigger that?
If you remove it does it return everytime you reload the firewall rules?
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@stephenw10 - I think this is openvpn related problem. Because each time something heavy running over the openvpn (NordVPN) i see lots of packet drops and this errors seems to accumulate quite quickly. I now switched over to Dell R330 and back to virtualised, but when I last checked it on the HP T620, it was something like over 120 times repeated errors today.
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Hmm, that's not an error I've seen before. You had the same config running in all 3 cases?
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Do you see the file /var/etc/xinetd.conf present on the system? That error appear to related to opening/closing that file.
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@stephenw10 - Thank you Stephen for taking the time to reply. The following is an update for anyone who comes across this which may benefit from this exchange.
No matter what I tried i could not get rid of the crash. I noticed this usually happens when the firewall is under heavy use. Normal use usually did not result with the issue.
In the end I decided to change the machine and now using Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-8500 CPU which has been working with no issues for few days now. I know this is way overkill, but the lower powered ones were problematic.As for your question on:
Do you see the file /var/etc/xinetd.conf present on the system?I moved into a different system and don't have access to that install anymore hence i can not answer it.
