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    My PFSense crashes randomly when using wifi

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Wireless
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    • T
      Tommyboy
      last edited by

      Hi all,

      I've been using monowall for about 2 years on a PIII with 512MB RAM. Works great.
      I wanted to add wifi to our LAN, so I started reading around and upgraded my
      monowall to Pfsense.
      I was using the last beta, but now I updated to latest 1.01.

      My problem :
      After upgrading to PFsense, I inserted a PCI D-link 520 wireless NIC in the PC (which is listed as compatible
      in the forums).
      I could quickly configure the card, and it works great.
      Under the latest beta however, the pfsense crashed every week or so.
      PC just stopped responding on keystrokes. So it really hanged.
      After updating to 1.01, it crashed every 5 minutes!

      I disabled the wireless NIC (assign interfaces), and the problem disappeared.

      What can I do about this?

      Thanks !
      Tommy.

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      • L
        lsf
        last edited by

        Try to move the card around in different PCI slots, try to disable stuff that you do not need to free up resources (like sound, gameport, USB etc.
        Atheros cards are not very happy about sharing IRQ, also they are not very happy with VIA/SIS based motherboard chipsets.

        -lsf

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        • Z
          zbuzanic
          last edited by

          I found the same problem on my two pfsense pc-s, third one is working just fine.
          So, when I plug in ralink/atheros card and if I try to transfer some amount of data, pfsense hangs after some time. It looks like it allows you to transfer some amount of date and after that it's dead. Same thing happens if I try FTP transfer without limits trought wireless, then it will hang almost immediately after transfer will reach it's maximum flow.
          Two boards are SIS / VIA :( and for the third one I don't know.
          Can I somehow check from pfsense which board is it since I have only wifi access to that pc?

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          • H
            hoba
            last edited by

            Go to http://<pfsense>/status.php and have a look at the dmesg output (at the very bottom).</pfsense>

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            • Z
              zbuzanic
              last edited by

              AMD K6-2 200Mhz cpu with Intel MB, hmmm, interesting :))

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              • L
                lsf
                last edited by

                Is that the one working ?, or is that the one not working ? (the Intel based MB I mean).
                For me it has allways been the Intel boards that works, SIS and especially VIA has allways given me some sort of trouble. SIS and sigle card somtimes work ok. But after figuring out that SIS and VIA often gave me problems, I just went with Intel based chipsets on the MB and never looked back.

                -lsf

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                • Z
                  zbuzanic
                  last edited by

                  Intel is working, but sis/via not… I got yesterday one more via chipset so I'll try that one also ;)

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                  • Z
                    zbuzanic
                    last edited by

                    I still had problems with snapshot-11-28, but with SNAPSHOT-12-20, everything is working??? system is stable, and working as supposed. No more crashes! Good job, whatever you did!  :o

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                    • T
                      Tommyboy
                      last edited by

                      Hi ,

                      Still having these problems.
                      Mine is a "CPU: Intel Pentium III (751.71-MHz 686-class CPU)" with "real memory  = 671088640 (640 MB)"
                      It is a "3VAAV" motherboard with VIA chipset.

                      What can I do?

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                      • H
                        hoba
                        last edited by

                        Search for a biosupdate. If there is a newer version give that a try. Some atheros issues were fixed for wraps with the latest bios version (though a wrap is a completely different device). Maybe a biosupdate can fix your board too.

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                        • T
                          Tommyboy
                          last edited by

                          Okay thanx!

                          Can you also explain what everybody means by 'snapshots'.
                          Are these beta-versions? Where could I download them?

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                          • H
                            hoba
                            last edited by

                            Snapshots are non release versions that are somewhere between the latest release version and the next upcoming release version. They are mainly meant for testing though we pull snapshots that won't work if we detect a problem. They usually should work. Usually you will see snapshots every few days. You can find them at the following location: http://pfsense.com/~sullrich/

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                            • Z
                              zbuzanic
                              last edited by

                              I haven't change my snapshot after it worked fine and this is what I curently have:
                              Uptime: 17 days, 02:05

                              Wooosh!!! Run, baby run! :))) GJ!

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