Make pfSense boot faster?

riahc3

Im running pfSense in a VM on ESXi and when I reboot, it takes FOREVER to pfSense to fully boot up and establish DHCP services and PPPoE. How can I make it skip checks like file system checks and other checks that can be skipped?

Thank you

heper

i run around 10 pfsenses in esxi … takes around a 1-2minutes or so to boot. Doesn't seem like abnormal to me.

if it takes longer for you ... then there is probably something wrong.

KOM

Seriously. I just timed my config and it goes from cold to pfSense menu in 1:11, hardly forever. Also, considering it's a router, how often do you really need to reboot it?

Atlantisman

I also run pfsense on ESXi 5.1 and 5.5. It boots in about a minute.

johnpoz

I run pfsense on 5.5u1 and it boots in very quickly, I am remote currently so can not time it.. but I would be surprised if its even a minute.

You could remove the F1 prompt to shave a couple of seconds
https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Remove_F1_Boot_Prompt

What packages do you have installed?

What is your host info, what are the specs you have setup for the vm. Forever is clearly a very arbitrary term - how about an actual number. Maybe to you 45 seconds seems like forever ;) In your host is your datastore ssd, or across the network, nfs, iscsi, etc.

When I get home I can reboot it and give actual time of when client stops getting to the internet, to when the internet works again, etc.

riahc3

I havent timed it but I can pretty much say its about 3 minutes.

My datastore is on a mechanical 7200rpm drive. ESXi 5.5u1 boots off a USB 3.0 drive but that should make any difference.

I can pretty much almost say that ESXi and pfSense takes about the same time to boot.

johnpoz

Well here is reboot timed pinging to outside pfsense

2014-07-04 05:52:50.311: From 4.2.2.2: bytes=60 seq=0033 TTL=57 ID=51e8 time=10.075ms
2014-07-04 05:52:54.320: Timeout waiting for seq=0034

so offline 05:52:54 for reboot

2014-07-04 05:53:58.327: Timeout waiting for seq=0075
2014-07-04 05:53:58.327: From 4.2.2.2: bytes=60 SEQ=0077 TTL=57 ID=51e9 time=11.180ms

pinging outside again at 05:53:58, so 1 minute

But that is counting shutdown time.. And the 3 second wait until it boots. So yup under 1 minute. Now I am on SSD for my datastore, maybe the others with 1 minute boots are as well.. Do you have other freebsd vms that boot faster?

Also - as already stated its a router, why are you rebooting it? Mine runs for weeks if not months without reboot. Only time would be upgrade or power outage, etc.