Routing occasionally fails

Hi All,

I am new to pfsense and need some guidance, my box hardware is:

Zotac IONITX-L w/ Intel Atom330
Intel PRO/1000 pt Dual Port server adapter
Pfsense version: 2.0

WAN on EM1
LAN on EM0

WAN is set to DHCP

It generally functions fine for a while, but about once a day or randomly it will just decide to stop routing (I can't access webconfig and the WAN goes down). I know that pfsense is still responding as I can hit the power button and it will gracefully shutdown, then when I restart everything is fine again. Then at one point it completely stopped working and I had to drag out a monitor and plug it in, it claimed that the link state on my interfaces had changed to "down" and was sitting in the setup waiting for me to re-configure it.

I unplugged the WAN/LAN on the NIC and plugged it back in but it would not detect the link state. The NIC lights were off and I couldn't assign them as interfaces, so I figured the NIC was cooked and replaced it.

Now with the new NIC it's back to working again, but still doing the same thing where it randomly stops routing until I reboot it, pfsense again is still responding. I have not had an issue with the new NIC with not being able to assign interfaces or anything yet.

I also didn't really have this issue until upgrading to version 2.0, but I am not sure if that's a coincidence or what.

I suspect maybe there is some kind of hardware conflict between the board and the PCI-e NIC, perhaps some settings in the BIOS? There are a tonne of settings surrounding the PCI-E port and I am not sure what any of them do, the motherboard manual is very useless in that department.

So any special things I need to set in the BIOS for the PCI-e NIC to function properly? If not, where can I find pfsense logs to try to figure out what happens when it dies like this?

wallabybob

@RabidSmurf:

where can I find pfsense logs to try to figure out what happens when it dies like this?

Status -> System Logs and click on the appropriate tab. By default, the web GUI shows only the 50 most recent entries. Go to the Settings tab to change the number of entries displayed.

@wallabybob:

Status -> System Logs and click on the appropriate tab. By default, the web GUI shows only the 50 most recent entries. Go to the Settings tab to change the number of entries displayed.

Cool thanks, for some reason I thought something like that would be under "Diagnostics"

dszp

You'd think that perhaps, but all the devs are pretty set in their ways as far as what is on each menu, with no receptivity to changing stuff around (at least without a strong consensus from users). Definitely arguments both ways…people familiar with it would complain they couldn't find the new location, and people new will wonder why it's "wrong" and some of it's just personal preference with no menu being better than another (probably for different reasons) :-)

jimp

Until some intrepid coder comes long and completely rewrites the menu system to be fully user-configurable… Then we could have a "classic" menu layout that never changes, something else that may be completely different but in some regards more logical, and a third or n+1 option in which users could rearrange things however they want.

Sounds fun, but something that would have to gain some funding or have someone step up and just do it.