Hello list,
I have the latest nightly pfSense 2.0 RC installed in a xen HVM with:
em0 => LAN
em1 => WAN
Both interfaces are bridged on the Debian dom0 side to their
respective interfaces:
# brctl show
bridge name bridge id STP enabled interfaces
xenbr0 8000.000000000100 no eth0-lan
tap1.0
vif1.0
xenbr1 8000.000000000110 no eth1-wan
tap1.1
vif1.1
The hardware NICs are Marvell 88E8057 and the emulated NICs are Intel E1000.
On every pfSense bootup, everything will work nicely initially but
the WAN will suddenly stop functioning after about an hour (varies);
pings don't go through and no DHCP server replies are received trying
to renew the WAN DHCP allocation. Also, nothing is logged in neither
pfSense, dom0 nor xen, as if it just failed with no reason whatsoever.
Not sure if both TX and RX have failed or only one of them, but is
there a way to test that without monkeying around with the switch
(since only a capture outside of pfSense and dom0 would be reliable in
this case)?
Funny thing is, when this occurs, I can remedy it by "ifconfig
xenbr1 down; ifconfig xenbr1 up" in dom0 and then "dhclient em1" in
pfSense. After which, everything is rock solid for as long as I've
tested (two months).
Thinking this may be a bridge problem, I tried passing through the
physical WAN NIC into pfSense. However, the problem still occurs but
this time I haven't figured out a way to bring it back up when it
occurs.
I'm still not sure if the problem lies with xen or pfSense or the
NIC or Debian, but it is likely that the combination came up with
something toxic. So I'm asking you network gurus first if you have any
idea about how to troubleshoot this problem?
Also, meanwhile I've come up with a dom0 script (since I'd prefer
to not touch the innards of pfSense) that will do the above-mentioned
steps if it detects the WAN becoming unresponsive; in case the system
reboots while I'm away. However, I'm having problems trying to run the
dhclient part in pfSense. Is there a way to bypass the console menu
when connecting to pfSense via SSH? Or a way to simulate key presses
in the menu to get into shell?
Thanks!
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