[Solved] pfSense on Fitlet2 - system freezes after ~1d uptime

[200421-1]

Hi

I just recently bought a fitlet2 with additional 2 NIC's (FACET card). I then proceeded with installation of the latest stable pfSense (2.4.5 - running on FreeBSD 11.3). All worked fine for approx. 19-23 h and then system freezes. It does not any longer respond to the interfaces and neither on the console also all LED's continue blinking as they normally do. Only way to start the software again was to power cycle. On a rare occasion I got a kernel panic and the device rebooted itself.

After some days tweaking and asking on IRC I then finally downgraded to pfSense 2.4.4-p3 (running on FreeBSD 11.2-RELEASE-p10). Same problem occured again. I then found some tweaks to do in order to prevent mbuf overflow on Intel NIC's (specificallz the I211 Intel NIC's). Now I am testing again.

I did a stresstest (had the CPU at 100% for 1h) and was barely reaching 60°C and everything was still running smooth af! Love the box but I have to find a way to get it running stable...

Will update the post once I have tested further but it is time consuming as you normally only hit the bug once in a day.
Any inputs on what to try are welcome though.

[irads]

Sounds like a driver problem. If I had to guess I would focus on the i211 NICs.
Unfortunately Compulab has no knowledge in FreeBSD, but AFAIK fitlet2 is quite popular among pfSense users, so may be worth consulting on pfSense forums.

To rule-out the possibility of a hardware problem, first run memtest. Then you can install and run Linux Mint. See http://www.fit-pc.com/wiki/index.php/Fi ... ware#Linux
If there is any sign of instability, please don't hesitate to contact our technical support https://fit-iot.com/web/compulab/contact-us/

[200421-1]

I will run a memtest just to be sure later. But can't do now as my wife would kill me (working from home)

As for now erverything runs stable and it looks like the instability can be solved through configuration. It could highly likely be an issue with the NIC driver and I will post it to pfSense forums to make them aware (but have previously talked with the community already).

What solved my problem for now (2.5 days uptime and counting):

• Activated both "Disable Gateway Monitoring" and "Disable Gateway Monitoring Action" on the routing gateway

• Disabled IPv6 on WAN as it was never successful (my ISP does not provide it yet)

I am also running 2.4.5 again, as the problem happened both with that and 2.4.4-p3 version.

And no worries - still love this little fitlet2. Admiring how much performance is in this little box!