PfSense 2.3 LAN interface stops routing traffic - stops working after 2 or 3 day
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I'm having a really weird issue ever since we upgraded to pfSense 2.3 from 2.2.x. Our company manages networks for approximately 60 sites. Whenever I see a new version of pfsense out, I usually upgrade about 2-3 locations to test with to make sure it's stable in our environment before I upgrade.
All seemed to be going well until a few days after upgrading.
For some reason every few days with seemingly no rhyme or reason the LAN interface stops servicing anything. I can still access the firewall via IPSec and the external WAN side, but inside the network I cannot ping the LAN interface nor can I get to the internet. Only a reboot seems to resolve the issue.
The only package we use is pfblockerNG which is at version 2.0.10 currently, though I'm going to update it to 2.0.11 right now to see if that helps. Other than that's it's a pretty vanilla install.
Aside from the LAN interface not responding there really isn't anything else I can see to indicate why this is happening. If I look at the logs, I see absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. Everything is the same old routine information. The ONLY other symptom that I have seen happen at all three locations is that the load average is pretty high. Usually around 3.01-3.08. All three sites utilize different hardware (hence why they are my test sites) and yet this issue happens at each. Some are Intel one is AMD, they all have different RAM sizes, SSDs vs HDs, different brands of interface cards (some Intel some Realtek), etc.
I have attached a screenshot of the dashboard so you can see what I'm seeing. Thoughts?
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If it's helpful, here is my screenshot after the reboot. You can see things look much more normal with regards to states and CPU utilization/load averages.
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The only package we use is pfblockerNG which is at version 2.0.10 currently, though I'm going to update it to 2.0.11 right now to see if that helps. Other than that's it's a pretty vanilla install.
Did you read this before you were upgrading? Issues updating from 2.3-RC (or older 2.3 installs) to 2.3-RELEASE
Aside from the LAN interface not responding there really isn't anything else I can see to indicate why this is happening. If I look at the logs, I see absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. Everything is the same old routine information.
The hard way would be to search and find nothing the easiest way is to back to 2.2.6 or from what you where
coming and and install or play back the config.xml and/or backups."Some" where reporting that they have really great problems with the upgrade, others that there is a
problem with pfBlockerNG and others on top were talking about alls was fine and is going on fine. So
you see it is really rich mixed up and I personally would be patient and go with the last known working
version and wait a moment.The ONLY other symptom that I have seen happen at all three locations is that the load average is pretty high.
Could it be that your RAM is running out of space? Perhaps a nice try to upgrade the hardware at first and
go on then with the software? Only perhaps i mean.Usually around 3.01-3.08. All three sites utilize different hardware (hence why they are my test sites) and yet this issue happens at each.
Would it help to go with fully identically hardware such the pfSense store or Netgate are offering?
Or a custom build by your own I mean, based on a well working hardware platform? Only a thought?Some are Intel one is AMD, they all have different RAM sizes, SSDs vs HDs, different brands of interface cards (some Intel some Realtek), etc.
On the other hand if something if affected by that, and all hardware is the same, you could runing in the
next trap and ending up with all devices bricked!!!! So a cool spare machine or testing device would be nice
to have too, as I see it right.My guess;
- Sporadic running out of mbuf size
- Sporadic running out of RAM
- If Squid is in the game and acting as a caching proxy server it could perhaps running out of storage space?
- to much traffic on the DMZ or LAN side and the entire LAN interface(s) are going down or will be saturated
and are not responding anymore? - Cool iOS BYOD devices in the tethering mode (with his own DHCP) or massively TOS signals from Apples
iPhones! Or any device on the guest side perhaps?
If you are able to reach the WAN side from outside and also that over VPN, that side is not the problem
in my eyes it must be more or less something on the LAN side.Personally I mean on top of this, the new version 2.3 and above should be getting some or much more
power, RAM, stronger hardware and what else you would call it. -
I have same issue.
My hardware:
Dell Power edge 2900
32GB RAM
QuadCore
HD SAS: 512GBPackets:
Suricata
PFBlocker
Zabbix-aget-LTS
OpenVPN Client Export.:(
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I having a very similar problem too… After a few days the pfSense 2.3 stop routing the traffic and after reboot everything works fine... With the 2.2.6 release I never had this problem...
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Same problems in this post: https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=110716.0
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First of all, thank you for your thought out reply, BlueKobold. With that said, I think you are missing the issue at heart, so please don't be offended if I dismiss some of your points.
I have already considered going to 2.2.6. These are my test sites. They will stay on this release until it's stable enough to roll out to the rest, but thanks for the suggestion.
As you can see on my firewall screen shots, I am no where CLOSE to running out of RAM so again that is not the issue. Also, this is why I test on multiple hardware platforms. They ALL exhibit the same behavior. The one I am showing you is the oldest but still plenty capable. Again, RAM/hardware "load" is not an issue.
Most of our sites use 2-3 different hardware models all fully supported by pfsense and even sold on the store. While they are not "official" hardware builds sold from the pfsense store, they are identical hardware to things the store has sold in the past. Again not trying to be dismissive but asking me to buy hardware is silly given that this is a community supported forum and I'm already using properly supported hardware.
I have plenty of spare machines for emergencies. That's not the issue. The issue I'm having is stated above and I would appreciate help on that issue specifically, not on how to run our networks. Again thanks for the suggestion but please stick to helping with the issue at hand.
Not running out of mbuf.
Not running out of RAM.
There is no squid server nor proxy cache server, etc.
A rogue DHCP server or iOS devices doing what you suggest would not be causing the behavior I am seeing.
Obviously, as I said, the WAN/VPN side is fine it's just the LAN side however the interface stops responding thus meaning it's something on the firewall software itself. It's not a hardware issue and especially not given the various types of hardware I'm testing on ALL showing the same behavior.
I understand that 2.3 requires a bit more juice but I promise it's not a load issue.
Sorry again if any of this comes across as ungrateful for your post. I wasn't trying to be rude, but more clearly state and reiterate that the problem is definitely software related and I would appreciate help that way. Thanks.
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byusinger84: I'm sending you a PM with an alternate kernel to try. It's not an issue I'm able to replicate, so trying to get some feedback from those who can. It at least won't make anything worse.
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An update for anyone following this thread. The new kernel did not work.
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Firewall froze again this morning. What is interesting is that even though there are no log entries that I can see as to why this is happening, the monitoring tab shows something interesting.
As you can see in the attached screen shot, CPU interrupt spikes to 25% and sits there. You can see this happened last night at 1:30 AM and continued straight through until this morning. Because this is a school there should be little to no utilization at that time of night. My guess is something is hanging.
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The cpu interrupt spike is what happened when mine had the issue too. It stayed high even when I failed back over to the 2.1.5 primary cluster member and very little traffic was going to the secondary 2.3 member. I had to reboot to get the high interrupt back to near zero. I had this happen interestingly right at 5am too when it happened several days ago :).
I haven't had another incident yet since 2 days ago so far. Maybe it is just a matter of time though. These are the changes I made that were different than when it stopped passing some percentage of traffic on the WAN last time…
- Removed hw.igb.num_queues=2 from the /boot/loader.conf.local file (now defaults to 0 which I think means self tuning)
- Removed hw.igb.rx_process_limit=1000 from /boot/loader.conf.local file (now defaults to 100)
- Changed my IP Aliases from being assigned to the WAN interface to being assigned to CARP on secondary. Primary still had IP Aliases on CARP IP as it was not upgraded. This meant my IP Aliases were up on both members until I switched to the secondary. It is a backup site so I didn't realize it as production traffic is not going there. Only transaction logs and nfs copying between sites over ipsec. I don't think this is related because CARP was disabled on the primary when the traffic stopped flowing 10 hours later so while the IPs were up on both for awhile when I switched to the secondary server no IP Aliases were up on the primary pfsense 2.1.5 server.
So far so good but I have only had one time where some percentage of traffic stopped being received from the WAN interface and it was 10 hours after switching to the secondary pfsense 2.3 firewall.
My scenario might just be related to the num_queues thing that I had leftover from the previous 2.1.5 version.
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The cpu interrupt spike is what happened when mine had the issue too. It stayed high even when I failed back over to the 2.1.5 primary cluster member and very little traffic was going to the secondary 2.3 member. I had to reboot to get the high interrupt back to near zero. I had this happen interestingly right at 5am too when it happened several days ago :).
I haven't had another incident yet since 2 days ago so far. Maybe it is just a matter of time though. These are the changes I made that were different than when it stopped passing some percentage of traffic on the WAN last time…
- Removed hw.igb.num_queues=2 from the /boot/loader.conf.local file (now defaults to 0 which I think means self tuning)
- Removed hw.igb.rx_process_limit=1000 from /boot/loader.conf.local file (now defaults to 100)
- Changed my IP Aliases from being assigned to the WAN interface to being assigned to CARP on secondary. Primary still had IP Aliases on CARP IP as it was not upgraded. This meant my IP Aliases were up on both members until I switched to the secondary. It is a backup site so I didn't realize it as production traffic is not going there. Only transaction logs and nfs copying between sites over ipsec. I don't think this is related because CARP was disabled on the primary when the traffic stopped flowing 10 hours later so while the IPs were up on both for awhile when I switched to the secondary server no IP Aliases were up on the primary pfsense 2.1.5 server.
So far so good but I have only had one time where some percentage of traffic stopped being received from the WAN interface and it was 10 hours after switching to the secondary pfsense 2.3 firewall.
My scenario might just be related to the num_queues thing that I had leftover from the previous 2.1.5 version.
None of those things apply to me in my case so the underlying issue must be something else.
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Updated to 2.3 - running in a Parallels VM on OS/X. I had the same issue - lan would stop responding, while Wan/VPN was responsive. I had pfblockerNG running hourly updates, so changed that to daily. Also removed DHCP registration and Static DHCP registration from DNS Resolver. I don't know which one fixed it, but have not had a hang requiring reboot now for 5 days.
The system seemed to hang just after the top of the hour 3 or 4 times per day (hence the cron change) and there were also DHCP logs which stated that a static IP address had changed its MAC address from its MAC address to the same MAC address hence the DHCP change in Resolver).
Whichever it was, no probs now.
Hope that helps
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Updated to 2.3 - running in a Parallels VM on OS/X. I had the same issue - lan would stop responding, while Wan/VPN was responsive. I had pfblockerNG running hourly updates, so changed that to daily. Also removed DHCP registration and Static DHCP registration from DNS Resolver. I don't know which one fixed it, but have not had a hang requiring reboot now for 5 days.
The system seemed to hang just after the top of the hour 3 or 4 times per day (hence the cron change) and there were also DHCP logs which stated that a static IP address had changed its MAC address from its MAC address to the same MAC address hence the DHCP change in Resolver).
Whichever it was, no probs now.
Hope that helps
I removed pfblocker completely and it still froze so I don't think that's the culprit.
I do not have DHCP running on pfsense.
I wish those were my issues but sadly they are not.
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I don't use dhcp or pfblocker. Firewall still running well for me going on 3 days.
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I set pfblocker to now only update once a day. We shall see.
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I'm not running pfblocker or any services outside of openvpn/ipsec, other than that it's a clean install on this hardware: https://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Atom/X10/A1SRi-2558F.cfm
The problem still persists even with the custom kernel so I'd be surprised if any of these services in particular are the cause.
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If the custom kernel is the one provided by cmb, that disabled the netmap stuff. What is a bit interesting is IPsec; I think alot or all of folks talking about this problem/symptom they have IPsec and em/igb interfaces involved.
Would it be possible to disable the IPsec VPNs temporarily? That would be an interesting data point. If the problem goes away, that narrows down the search for root cause. If it doesn't, then it's not a factor.Just to make it clear, I'm not part of or associated with pfSense, just a user that likes puzzles.
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@mer:
If the custom kernel is the one provided by cmb, that disabled the netmap stuff. What is a bit interesting is IPsec; I think alot or all of folks talking about this problem/symptom they have IPsec and em/igb interfaces involved.
Would it be possible to disable the IPsec VPNs temporarily? That would be an interesting data point. If the problem goes away, that narrows down the search for root cause. If it doesn't, then it's not a factor.Just to make it clear, I'm not part of or associated with pfSense, just a user that likes puzzles.
I am actually thinking you are correct. Unfortunately I can't disable IPsec because it is essential for our sites to function properly. I am however using em/igb at these three test sites so that might explain a few things. Perhaps a bad network driver is causing the issue?
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We've confirmed it's not specific to any particular NIC. Happens on em, igb, and re at a minimum, and probably anything.
It seems to be related to UDP traffic streams across IPsec. dd /dev/urandom to UDP netcat with a bouncer back on the other side, and it's replicable within a few minutes to a few hours. Faster CPUs seem to be less likely to hit the issue quickly.
It seems like it might be specific to SMP (>1 CPU core). I haven't been able to trigger it on an ALIX even beating it up much harder, relative to CPU speed, than faster systems where it is replicable.
If you're running on a VM and seeing this issue with >1 vCPU, try changing your VM to 1 vCPU.
If you're on a physical system, you can force the OS to disable additional cores. Take care when doing this, try it on a test system first if you're not comfortable with doing things along these lines.
dmesg | grep cputo find the apic. You'll have something like:
cpu0 (BSP): APIC ID: 0 cpu1 (AP): APIC ID: 2In /boot/loader.conf.local (create file if it doesn't exist), add:
hint.lapic.2.disabled=1where 2 is the APIC ID of the cpu1 CPU core to disable. Replace accordingly if yours isn't 2. Add more lines like that for each additional CPU to disable so you only have cpu0 left enabled. Reboot.
Then report back whether it continues to happen. That seems to suffice as a temporary workaround.