Kernel Panic when Upgrading to 2.8.0 beta

CCNewb

For the past year, PFSense has been crashing once every 2 weeks. No log messages, no console messages, nothing, so I figured it was something w/ the hardware. I've replaced every single piece of hardware except for the CPU (AMD Ryzen 5 2400G) and the motherboard (ASRock AB350 micro-ITX), and my 10G NIC (10Gtek Dual 10Gb Intel 82599ES Controller).

I figured why not try 2.8.0 to see if the crashes will finally stop.

As soon as PFSense tries to boot to FreeBSD 15.0, I get a kernel panic..

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I see in the kernel panic message, right before the crash it reports the on-board Wifi AC adapter (iwm0 / iwm3168fw).

So, I disabled the Wifi adapter in the BIOS, but I still see in there in the output, upon boot. Tried several times, even resetting bios back to defaults, then changing Wifi adapter to disabled.

This motherboard is pretty old ~2017, so I'm thinking it's probably time to just go buy a "new" AM4 motherboard and see if I have any better luck.

I tried the 2.8.0 installation several times-- upgrading from 2.72, and several times formatting the SSD and using a USB installer to go straight to 2.8.0-- still get the same kernel panic each time.

Had to re-install 2.7.2 to be able to boot PFSense.

Patch

@CCNewb said in Kernel Panic when Upgrading to 2.8.0 beta:

For the past year, PFSense has been crashing once every 2 weeks. No log messages, no console messages, nothing, so I figured it was something w/ the hardware. I've replaced every single piece of hardware except ...

You have more patience with old hardware than I do. Hardware often last longer than 6 years but not always.

CCNewb

@Patch man, my whole day was ruined. I went to Microcenter at 3pm and got a "new" AM4 micro-ITX board, they only had 1 choice. And it's a bad board. Can tell it was used but they sold it to me as new, and the thing wouldn't post. Spent all afternoon messing around w/ it, family upset internet was down, ugh. Ended up reverting back to the old mobo and gonna return all the crap I bought tomorrow. So disappointing.

patient0

@CCNewb what you can try is disable the wifi using a device hint, to see if it was the reason for the kernel panic.

At the loader prompt before pfSense boots (press '3' when the boot menu shows) you enter:

set hint.iwm.0.disabled="1"

or since you upgrade from 2.7.2 you can add/set it in the /boot/loader.conf.local file (it may not exist yet):

hint.iwm.0.disabled="1"

The age of your hardware should not be an issue, there is generally good support for it. Wifi cards being the exception in general for FreeBSD.

Addition: if you get a kernel panic, run bt (backtrace) at the debug prompt, that will give more information about the module involved.

CCNewb

@patient0 thanks! I will try one night this week and report back

stephenw10

Or physically remove the wifi device? Disabling it in the BIOS doesn't seem to be working as it should. A jumper maybe?

But it also might be something else, the panic string there is unhelpful. Try running bt at the db> prompt there and see what the backtrace is. That should where it's panicking.

CCNewb

@patient0 Dude, you rock!!! That totally fixed the issue. 2.8.0 upgrade went super smooth after adding that /boot/loader.conf.local file

Thanks man

CCNewb

@stephenw10 thank you, didn't know about bt, patient0's tip about disabling the hardware via the loader.conf.local file did the trick. I was able to upgrade, it went super fast.