pfctl DIOCADDRULENV device not configured

Cabledude

Hello @stephenw10
I am continuing this in a new topic so as to not pollute the eMMC endurance topic any more than I have. Here is where we left off.

So I successfully installed pfSense 24.03 on an SG-1100 on an external SSD enclosure connected to the SG-1100 USB port, using the Net Installer.

I am feeding the unit by a cable off my main network (SG-2100 + UniFi) on a VLAN. I think it did work initially, but after restoring a previous config (saved from a UFS install, now restoring on a ZFS unit), I systematically am seeing this error:
There were errors loading the rules: pfctl DIOCADDRULENV device not configured - The line in question reads [0];

I even reverted to Factory Defaults twice, but this error keeps coming back.

My WAN is offline, although the cable is live, I checked.

Interestingly, while I do a netgate device reboot, I do get internet connectivity very briefly during early boot stage, then soon it stops.

Hope you can help me out.

Regards,
Pete

stephenw10

Hmm, what is the bootcmd env you have now? I don't expect it to boot USB without intervention normally. Maybe it somehow sees the USB connected drive as not usb directly.

The enforced password change is new in 24.03 to meet new requirements.

Do you see anything logged when that pfctl error is shown?

Steve

Cabledude

@stephenw10
Hi Steve, In the dash the Disks panel shows "0% of 106G (zfs)" for /cf, /home, /tmp and /var. That's not good.

I see peculiar things in the logs.
#1 lots of log lines from the boot sequence are not there.
#2 every couple of seconds I see:
pid 91778 (pfctl), jid 0, uit 0: exited on signal 6 (core dumped)
where the pid is never the same

I did change the "run setenv bootcmd 'run usbboot' and then saveenv to make it boot from USB each time". You put an '=' in your syntax which was not accepted but I dug up a topic where jimp listed it without the '='. So that part is done.

After setting the bootcmd I tried booting from the SSD (in both the USB2 as USB3 ports) but these attempts prove futile still: I'm very sure I'm missing a lot of log entries and I'm also missing older Notices (red chime signal top right in dash) after a reboot.

It appears as though the system is still using the eMMC to write to even though the system appears to be running from SSD. The SSD status lights are indicating that the drive is very busy.

So I'm not sure what I can do now. Both you and Jim mentioned in that topic I referenced that the 1100's can be picky when it comes to USB drives.

Is this external drive option completely dependent on erasing the eMMC? In that case I might as well stop trying, I put in some 5-7 hours already. It's fun, but I'll dump the unit if this is not going anywhere.

Thanks Steve

Cabledude

@stephenw10 During boot sequence the unit reports 8 disks. In the other topic you mentioned it should be 5 and if it reports 8 that means that the eMMC is not wiped.

stephenw10

Yup the 8 disks indicates there is still a filesystem on the eMMC when it should have been erased by running usbrecovery.

However you should still be to boot from USB. It's easiest if the filesystem is different. So it boots the installer image because that's UFS.

If the eMMC has a ZFS filesystem using UFS on the SSD is much more likely to boot correctly.

Cabledude

@stephenw10 said in pfctl DIOCADDRULENV device not configured:

However you should still be to boot from USB. It's easiest if the filesystem is different. So it boots the installer image because that's UFS.

If the eMMC has a ZFS filesystem using UFS on the SSD is much more likely to boot correctly.

Hi Steve, thanks for your follow up.

For the record the unit is now in fact already booting from the SSD. I know this to be true because (1) the SSD status lights indicate the drive is busy and (2) i see a factory default configuration upon boot and (3) Disks reports 109M free space.
So is it using both the SSD and the eMMC now?

So basically you’re saying if I run the net installer again and reinstall pfSense on the SSD but selecting UFS the unit will completely discard the eMMC?

Update Monday June 17th: it's a new day and I just reinstalled on external SSD with UFS instead of ZFS. Removed net installer thumb drive and swapped USB SSD to USB3 port.
This time, downstream clients do get connected. The boot log still shows 8 disks found. It's still early but I don't see any pfctl notifications yet, or any notifications at all for that matter.

stephenw10

Ah, good.

Yeah it's confusing.If you boot ZFS and have two drives with zpools both named 'pfsense' it will mount the zpool from the eMMC even if it booted the kernel from USB. That's probably what you were seeing.

Cabledude

@stephenw10 : So it will be UFS from now on then, if I want to keep using this unit. It's going to live close to my 2100 - unplugged - in case I ever need to service the 2100.

Thank you for the support, couldn't have done it without.

Kind regards,
Pete

stephenw10

You should be able to use ZFS as long as zpool is a different name. However the Net Installer doesn't, currently, allow that. It always uses 'pfSense'.

I have an open feature request for that though so hopefully it should be an option soon.

Cabledude

@stephenw10 Okay, that's good thinking! I'll wait a while before configuring this SG-1100 as a backup unit.

Thanks again.