Hardware purchase advice.
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I believe some clarification is in order.
I will admit that at first I was daunted by all the command line messages, and did all my testing the other day with my brain half-shut. So I didn't understand what was going on, and mistook a few things to be errors.
Since I had also posted the previous message one day AFTER I had experienced those problems, my memory was a bit hazy, and I must have jumbled up the chronological sequence of events that took place.I did some more testing with the LiveCD today, and began to understand how things work.
So I finally figured out how to use the WAN Interface Selection prompt, and the LAN Interface Selection prompt that follows it. What I thought was the machine getting stuck on an error, turned out to simply be a prompt asking me to type in the device ID for the WAN and LAN interfaces, based on the list of device ids displayed above.
As it turns out, the realtek ethernet port on my Gigabyte motherboard is not detected at all by 2.0.3, but is detected by 2.1.I also posted earlier that 2.1 didn't work on my older workstation either. That is not correct. I tried again today, and got both 2.0.3 and 2.1 to run fine on my workstation. Since I do have two on-board ethernet ports on this machine, and both versions detected both ports fine, getting it to work was a cinch.
Then I tried both versions on my target hardware (the web server), and 2.0.3 got stuck because it didn't detect the onboard ethernet port (and I wasn't going to risk putting in the old LAN Card again), and 2.1 detected it alright, and I was able to get it to run with just the WAN port configured.
2.1, however, had a problem with my Toshiba 500 GB hdd on the web server machine, and wouldn't move past the "BIOS drive C: is " screen right after booting from CD begins. I don't know the model of the hdd, but it was purchased a couple of months ago, and is most likely recent. Surprisingly, 2.0.3 did not have any issues with this.
(Before I started any testing today, I did disable USB3 first thing on the machine, as per Bob's suggestion. So I don't know if this could have been one of the causes of the issues I faced three days ago.)In my last post, I also reported two other errors I faced that day, but was unable to describe them in detail.
Well, one of them was the 'root mount error', and it could have been due to the older hdd attached. I didn't do any installations today (because I have no more spare hdds to try it out with), only LiveCD testing, so I didn't run into this again today.
(But as mentioned above, 2.1 did fail to proceed even getting to the Menu Screen when my new hdd was connected to the machine. But if I can get 2.0.3 to work on my target hardware after I buy the 2-port ethernet card, I guess I can ditch the 2.1 idea for the time being till a stable release is released.)The second issue I reported was when I said something about seeing an IRQ not assigned related message and it being to do with my KVM switch. I was able to reproduce it today, and wrote down what it said. And I need some clarification on this from the experts.
This 'issue' happens when the entire thing has booted into pfSense, and the software is up and running. If at that point, I use my KVM switch to flip over to another machine (to open a browser window to log into pfSense), I noticed that every time I flipped out of the pfSense machine into another machine using the KVM switch's buttons, it used to refresh the screen, and do what appeared to be reload the list of devices attached to port. The text on the screen came to an end at this paragraph -
ums1: 3 buttons and [XYZ] coordinates ID=1
ugen1.5: <no brand="">at usbus1
ukbd1: <keyboard>on usbus1
kbd3 at ukbd1
uhid0: <mouse>on usbus1
device_attach: uhid0 attach returned 12Now I didn't know what this was the other day, and I assumed the machine had restarted, was rebooting, and that it was getting 'stuck' on this screen during the rebooting process. Also, hitting Alt+Control+Delete to force the machine to restart didn't seem to have any effect, so it was normal for me to assume the machine had frozen. (I can attest it had genuinely frozen during the root mount error issue the other day).
Today I encountered this again, and was wondering what to do when I accidentally hit Enter, and it proceeded a few lines and brought me back to the 'select what you want to do with pfSense' screen. So I assumed this was okay.
I had someone hit the buttons on the KVM switch back and forth a few times to switch between this machine and another, while I went over to a laptop plugged into the network, and tried to continue pfSense operations in the browser, and it didn't seem to be affected by this 'refreshing of devices'. But I just want a confirmation that this behavior is expected and normal, and that I am not to worry over this. Because, like I said before, the KVM switch is an essential part of my setup, and I can't ditch it. If pfSense doesn't work with the KVM switch, then I can't use pfSense.
I'm just looking for some assurance that this won't be an issue with the operations of pfSense.I still don't know what caused the machine to die out after POSTing the other day, but it could have been due to the older hardware attached that day for testing, because I didn't see it repeated today. I just steered clear of those two pieces for today (they're already in the garbage bin).</mouse></keyboard></no>
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The text on the screen came to an end at this paragraph -
ums1: 3 buttons and [XYZ] coordinates ID=1
ugen1.5: <no brand="">at usbus1
ukbd1: <keyboard>on usbus1
kbd3 at ukbd1
uhid0: <mouse>on usbus1
device_attach: uhid0 attach returned 12</mouse></keyboard></no>I guess it is FreeBSD reporting disconnect of USB mouse and keyboard as you switch the KVM FROM pfSense and then (shown here) connect of USB keyboard and mouse as you switch the KVM TO pfSense and so shouldn't be cause for alarm.
The
device_attach: uhid0 attach returned 12
could be an indicator of trouble if you wanted to use the mouse.
Probably a more reliable test of the system freezing would be: Do the keyboard indicators Num Lock or Caps Lock (if present)
change state if the corresponding key is pressed? No => frozen system.Thanks for the extensive documentation of your adventure.
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The
device_attach: uhid0 attach returned 12
could be an indicator of trouble if you wanted to use the mouse.
Probably a more reliable test of the system freezing would be: Do the keyboard indicators Num Lock or Caps Lock (if present)
change state if the corresponding key is pressed? No => frozen system.No, but I just discovered that hitting the Num Lock key toggles the KVM Switch buttons instead. :D
Anyway, mouse being unusable is hardly a concern, given that pfSense doesn't allow you to use a mouse anyway at the command prompt.
So I guess we're okay.
Now, we'll find out tomorrow if my entire target hardware is cut out for 2.0.3, after I get the ethernet card and put it on that machine. If yes, we can safely close this thread, and I'll go out and buy a new machine with the same specs.
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Right, so I bought the Intel LAN Card mentioned above, installed it in the target hardware, and ran LiveCD with both 2.0.3, and 2.1. It seems to be running fine, no hiccups.