Dhclient fails to get IP address

[jms703]

I have a new install of PFSense 2.0.1 as a KVM guest. When the VM boots for the first time, em1 (WAN) fails to get an IP address. When I reboot, I get an IP address. I logged into the console and checked dhclient. I've confirmed that dhclient is running and I see dhclient timing out in /var/log/system.log.

After I rebooted the VM, I noticed that em1 gets an IP address:
rc.newwanip: Informational is starting em1.
rc.newwanip: on (IP address: x.x.x.x) (interface: wan) (real interface: em1).

I can replicate this problem by halting PFSense and than restarting it.
I can resolve this problem by rebooting PFSense.

[NOYB]

Try setting the NIC speed and duplex rather than using auto detect.

[cmb]

I suspect the requests aren't getting out of KVM somehow, get some packet captures on the host to see.

@NOYB:

Try setting the NIC speed and duplex rather than using auto detect.

I wouldn't do that, it's almost certain to cause problems unless you have specific indicators it's necessary, and you haven't shown anything to indicate that's the case.

[Vorkbaard]

I had this problem on a PfSense 2.0.1 as Hyper-V guest. Try if it helps to bring the card down and up again:

ifconfig em1 down
ifconfig em1 up
dhclient em1

If it does, make a script that does that after booting.

For me that helped; I wrote it up here.