How bad are power outages?

[thecgmguy]

Hi Guys,

I'm using pfsense for a home router and we had a couple power outages.  How bad is this for the pfsense box?  Is there anything special I need to do after this occurs (e.g. filesystem integrity checks, etc)?

-M

[mhab12]

In some prior versions of pfSense this would be enough to toast the whole installation.  I think since then the devs made the decision to disable write caching - as far as I know there is nothing special to be done.

[danswartz]

I'm surprised you don't have it on a UPS?

[XIII]

if your worried about it put it on a ups as danswartz suggested or, every so often (how ever often you change settings or want to) backup the config file and when it gets toasted or is acting funny, reinstall and upload the config file for the least amount of downtime. also either way set up the mobo to turn on after a power outage, that way when the power comes back (on or off a ups) your pf box is back

[cmb]

I always intentionally yank the plug on my boxes, have done that thousands of times now and never had anything go wrong. It'll automatically run fsck to repair any filesystem inconsistency.

Years ago write caching was enabled for a period and could definitely cause filesystem corruption, that hasn't been the case for years though.