Firewall going back into factory default after reboot

firewold

The only way I found to be safe will be removing the additional interface from the configuration file before rebooting. Lately, magically, my system creates a clone of the WAN interface. This interface is not configured and can't be removed any other way than the above, causing the system at reboot to appear to be set back to factory default. By the way, if you try to reconfigure it from the console, it does not work either.

tbaror

@firewold:

The only way I found to be safe will be removing the additional interface from the configuration file before rebooting. Lately, magically, my system creates a clone of the WAN interface. This interface is not configured and can't be removed any other way than the above, causing the system at reboot to appear to be set back to factory default. By the way, if you try to reconfigure it from the console, it does not work either.

Hi
exactly the only way is to reinstall the system from scratch and reload back-up , btw i do have 3rd interface in the system that not configured at all ,i intend to use it as dmz later.
so would it be wise to check before each reboot if additional interface added into config file and remove it?
thx

firewold

@tbaror:

@firewold:

The only way I found to be safe will be removing the additional interface from the configuration file before rebooting. Lately, magically, my system creates a clone of the WAN interface. This interface is not configured and can't be removed any other way than the above, causing the system at reboot to appear to be set back to factory default. By the way, if you try to reconfigure it from the console, it does not work either.

Hi
exactly the only way is to reinstall the system from scratch and reload back-up , btw i do have 3rd interface in the system that not configured at all ,i intend to use it as dmz later.
so would it be wise to check before each reboot if additional interface added into config file and remove it?
thx

That is the way I do it. It is a pain to start from scratch all the time.

jimp

If someone comes up with a good way to reproduce any of these issues it would help. I've never seen it happen, so it's hard to speculate as to what might be happening.

As to getting going again, just get back into the interface one way or another and try to restore a backup from Diagnostics > Backup/Restore, on the Config History tab.

tbaror

@jimp:

If someone comes up with a good way to reproduce any of these issues it would help. I've never seen it happen, so it's hard to speculate as to what might be happening.

As to getting going again, just get back into the interface one way or another and try to restore a backup from Diagnostics > Backup/Restore, on the Config History tab.

Hi
I would like to post diagnostic but once its getting in such situation there is no way (for me) to make interface up again i find myself reinstalling system all over again, so the only way i see is to post complete pc image, or if you can indicate another way to retrieve the current config for posting.

Thanks

jimp

Press ctrl-c, or type "exit" at the interface prompts
break to a shell and:

 cp /conf/config.xml /conf/config.broken

And then try a factory reset from the menu

If you can mount a usb stick and copy it there, that would help too

mount -t msdos /dev/da0 /mnt
cp /conf/config.xml /mnt/config.broken
umount /mnt

Or at least look in the config, specifically at the interfaces portion, and see if you can tell us what it looks like (maybe pictures of the screen?)

tbaror

@jimp:

Press ctrl-c, or type "exit" at the interface prompts
break to a shell and:
 cp /conf/config.xml /conf/config.broken
And then try a factory reset from the menu

If you can mount a usb stick and copy it there, that would help too
mount -t msdos /dev/da0 /mnt
cp /conf/config.xml /mnt/config.broken
umount /mnt
Or at least look in the config, specifically at the interfaces portion, and see if you can tell us what it looks like (maybe pictures of the screen?)

Ok Jimp i will do it (mount usb) and post it by next Monday.
Thanks

louis-m

i've watched mine boot up after the upgrade on the console and it runs through without errors etc, just doesn't see any configured interfaces and starts the wan detection.
i then boot into the working slice and i have to reinstall snort etc to get it back to normal.

wallabybob

@jimp:

If someone comes up with a good way to reproduce any of these issues it would help.

I think there are a few issues here. One is that on some reboots pfSense wants to reconfigure the interfaces. I have seen this a number of times when the set of detected interfaces is different from the set of confgured interfaces. I believe this can be reliably and most conveniently reproduced by removing a configured USB interface before startup. I have a USB ethernet interface which occasionally doesn't get detected on startup after a panic. To the best of my recollection I have been able to recover every time by leaving the console at the prompt for the WAN (?) interface and removing and inserting the USB interface until its green (power?) LED comes on then typing ctrl-ATL-DEL on the keyboard to get a reboot. I have also seen a reconfigure on startup when a configured PCI interface is not detected at all but this is probably a little more awkward to reproduce than removing a USB interface.

A second issue is the appearance of "phantom" or clone interfaces. I posted a reproducer for "clone" interfaces in http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,27643.0.html

Efonnes

What type of connection is WAN? If it is PPTP or PPPoE, was it configured from the setup wizard? You could check your config.xml for an interface entry with some other name besides wan, lan, or opt# that may be there.

ccnet

Using pfSense-2.0-BETA4-20100923-1042
Hardware Compaq DL360 G1 PIII/866 512 MO.

Wan : dhcp 192.168.1.100/24
Lan static (set from console) 192.168.7.254/24

After a reboot ip address on Lan is lost. Openvpn configured with 192.168.11.0/24. No new hardware on the machine. No usb device.

Efonnes

ccnet:
If that isn't about the interface assignment prompt coming up at boot, you should make a separate topic for that.

firewold

In my case it happens when installing the OpenVPN export package. An additional not configured IF that is actually used by the WAN in my system.
If this interface is not removed from the configuration the system will reboot in what appears to be factory default. At this point you can only re-install pfsense.

tbaror

Hello all,

Here is my current Firewall config file, currently FW is stacked with network detection.
Please advice

Thanks

config.txt

jimp

@tbaror:

Hello all,

Here is my current Firewall config file, currently FW is stacked with network detection.
Please advice

Thanks

If you remove this line:

From just above "", does it work?

Not sure how/why that got inside that tag.

tbaror

If you remove this line:

From just above "", does it work?

Not sure how/why that got inside that tag.

I think you right, since i did file comparable with last backup i did and "ppppoe1" is highlighted straight away.
I will remove this line and check it , also don't have any clue how it been added to config file.
Thanks

vito

@jimp:

@tbaror:

Hello all,

Here is my current Firewall config file, currently FW is stacked with network detection.
Please advice

Thanks

If you remove this line:

From just above "", does it work?

Not sure how/why that got inside that tag.

Jimp,
Same problem here.
After i saw your post, i went to check my config also.

i had <em0>just above

removed the line, reinstalled, and uploaded the config.
pfsense came back up. (NOTE: my packages did not reinstall)

PF info:
2.0-BETA4 (i386)
built on Wed Sep 22 21:47:59 EDT 2010
FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE-p1</em0>

vito

Ok,
After i started adding my packages again the rouge interface reappeared.

packages installed:
openvpn export (note: this failed to install but was still in the installed pages list)
HAVP
Snort
Squid
Squid Guard.

Note sure it is related, but it seemed odd

tbaror

Ok,
After i started adding my packages again the rouge interface reappeared.

packages installed:
openvpn export (note: this failed to install but was still in the installed pages list)
HAVP
Snort
Squid
Squid Guard.

Note sure it is related, but it seemed odd

Hi Vito

I think we have something in common in booth of our FW except Squid Guard we have the same package structure
for me its happen twice in 1st time SQUID was not install but the last addition where OpenVpn.
could it be that OpenVpn is adding something to Interface ?when its happen in the 2nd time i just got into OpenVpn>client section (but not the very last action in the fw)since i didn't configure it yet started to do client configuration but then cancel it, then exit configuration.

vito

I have not done a fresh clean install to test more.
But i have not had the problem on the past few snaps.