Is Pfsense 2.0 Stable enough for a 5 user network?
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I'm wondering if maybe pfsense 2.0 has gotten better in the last couple of weeks, and if I would try it or not. I'm thinking maybe I should wait a few more weeks for it to become beta 2 or 3, but I hear that its being developed rapidly.
Thanks a lot,
~Shawn -
It is beta…
If you feel okay with rebooting it sometimes if something is wrong then it might be okay. I would stick with 1.2.3-Release if you are not knowing what you are doing...
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Nobody can really answer that question but you. If you are dead-set on using it and you require features from 2.0, give it a try, just keep backups before you upgrade and keep install media for 1.2.3 on hand.
2.0 is stable for some, and completely unreliable for others. It all depends on what features you use, hardware, etc.
If you do try it, be sure to report any issues you find, and always use the most current snapshot available before reporting an issue in case it has already been fixed.
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I have it installed at my home with 4 IPSec tunnels active and 3 more inactive. It's been fine for me so far, it's a LOT more intuitive than 1.2.3 is and I can't wait until it's done so we can start rolling it out to clients.
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Thanks for the help.
So, is it safe for me to just upgrade to 2.0 or should I do a complete reinstall?
I think I just need to make a backup in case something goes south… sounds easy enough!
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You should probably attempt the upgrade first. If it doesn't work, try to make a note of what didn't work specifically and open up a bug report so that the problems with upgrades can get fixed.
If nobody gives proper feedback when things don't go the right way, they'll never get fixed :)
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I tried to use in in Vmware 7.0. and 4 instances of PFsense 2.0
One instance is the loadbalancer with one PPPOE session, the other 3 isntaces run one PPPOE each so I get different gateways. But its completly lags my quad 9300, 3Ghz when I start all 4 and Windows 7 running in Vmware also gets disconnected.
All that works fine with 1.2.3
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works fine for me for a 10 user network using ADSL and pppoe
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I tried to use in in Vmware 7.0. and 4 instances of PFsense 2.0
One instance is the loadbalancer with one PPPOE session, the other 3 isntaces run one PPPOE each so I get different gateways. But its completly lags my quad 9300, 3Ghz when I start all 4 and Windows 7 running in Vmware also gets disconnected.
All that works fine with 1.2.3
The 2.0 images have debugging enabled in the kernel which will make it quite a bit slower than 1.2.x for the time being.
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I tried to use in in Vmware 7.0. and 4 instances of PFsense 2.0
One instance is the loadbalancer with one PPPOE session, the other 3 isntaces run one PPPOE each so I get different gateways. But its completly lags my quad 9300, 3Ghz when I start all 4 and Windows 7 running in Vmware also gets disconnected.
All that works fine with 1.2.3
The 2.0 images have debugging enabled in the kernel which will make it quite a bit slower than 1.2.x for the time being.
Not trying to sound impatient… but, any idea when debugging is going to be turned off? Maybe I could wait at least until then. I would try it out now except that the router is in our friend's office on the other side of the house, and if something went south, I would have to go over there to fix it.
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It will probably be quite a while. People are still seeing panics here and there, and there are a lot of in-kernel changes/patches that haven't seen enough testing yet.
You are always welcome to setup a builder and roll your own iso/update files without debugging if you wish. The process is pretty easy these days.
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If leaving it on meant for the furthering of pfsense… then I might want to leave it on.
How much slower is it? The computer I have has a 1.8Ghz cpu and 2GB RAM. Does the kernel debugging affect how packages like squid work, and such? Will my users experience a slower internet connection because of kernel debugging? If not, then I might just give 2.0 a try.
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Everything is slower. That means everything, packet processing, programs running, kernel processes, etc. IIRC, it also takes up more RAM since it has the debugging symbols loaded.
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I just upgraded to pfsense 2.0. Its working a lot better than I thought it would. However, ntop is not working and I still get the same ath0 beacon stuck errors. Its too bad about ntop… it seems like everything I've tried except for bandwidthD has not worked. Maybe this problem will be fixed in a future update pfsense.
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Well, I've tried pfsense 2.0 out… it worked great for a while. I was rather disappointed however that ntop was not working. Also, it did not seem like my wireless got that much better. It seemed to me like I got less stuck beacon errors.
Anyhow, I restarted it after it had run for a day or so. When it booted up it was somehow refusing connection to the LAN. I could not connect to it. I could give it a monitor and keyboard and verify that it is in fact booted up, but I could not connect to it on another computer. So, I just reinstalled pfsense 1.2.3. Maybe in a month or two pfsense 2.0 will be more stable... and then I'll upgrade.
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Hi,
I've been running the 2.0 alpha for awhile (home user) and it's been perfectly fine for what I've been doing….quick question, was the kernel debugging turned on in the alpha? (I'm assuming yes) Just curious as the 2.0 alpha performance has been fine so if I can upgrade to the beta with no degradation all the better...
Also, I think I had loaded the BSD 7.0 based 2.0 alpha, and I notice that all the snapshots are 8.0 based...can I still just run the upgrade image?
Thanks!
bman -
It will probably be quite a while. People are still seeing panics here and there, and there are a lot of in-kernel changes/patches that haven't seen enough testing yet.
You are always welcome to setup a builder and roll your own iso/update files without debugging if you wish. The process is pretty easy these days.
Hey jimp,
Do you have a link to some instructions on rolling your own iso without debugging enabled? I would like to do this to improve performance, for one, but also because the debugging kernel does not automatically reboot on crash, which leaves the network down.Thanks,
-paul -
The setup of a builder system is described here:
http://devwiki.pfsense.org/DevelopersBootStrapAndDevIso
You would need to edit the kernel configuration before starting the build. The kernel configurations files are under tools/builder_scripts/conf/ and you'd need to edit whichever one you will build (e.g. pfSense.8 for a build of pfSense 2.0 on FreeBSD 8 )
