I did a clean install of the 188 update on a new SSD disk
During the process I restored back-ups from my 187 installation.
At first it works just fine, bur after a few hours the 188 installation fails.
Both GUI and SSH access stops working. I can’t even ping the IPFire unit
My ISP have made no changes and apart for the SSD disk my hardware is unchanged. An Asus VM42 mini PC:
Just to check I did a second install and a third using another SSD disk.
But to no avail.
It works fine for a few hours. But then fails.
Upon a reboot it will start working - only to fail later.
I tried looking at the log-files through the GUI but haven’t found anything useful.
The 187 installation works flawlessly and since I can easily replace the SSD I’ve reverted the that.
But given the security improvement in 188 I’d like to update.
I may be overlooking something
Hello,
Just to clarify…
When I refer to a SSH connection and you mention CLI, in my world it is as such the same. And no, when the issue occurs it is not responding.
However, I can also confirm that a “direct connection” to the mini-pc using cable connections for HDMI video and USB for keyboard and mouse stops responding.
Indicator LED’s on the mini-pc indicated that it is not “completely dead” but rather in a state of limbo.
However, seeing other entries in the support community, it does occur to me that the ISO I’ve been using it the first one published after 188 going public.
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Might the issue be that some addendums have been made later?
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Given the ease of which I can switch SSD’s and since I do have a few SSD’s available, I can - when time allows and 100% online time is less important - make som tests.
I mentioned Console command line which is the terminal directly on the ipfire machine via hdmi or serial connection.
If you can get no response from the console connection (hdmi/usb) then something very serious has gone wrong on the system.
This could be hatdware related where something is stopping working when it gets to a particular temperature or … The fact that your leds keep blinking does not mean other parts cannot have stopped.
In the past i had a system that stopped working but the ethernet lights were still flashing away.
In my case a reboot did not help.
When you reboot and it works then you should look in the logs to see what messages there were just before it stopped (note the time it stopped).
If the normal log messages just stop that would suggest a hardware problem.
If there are some messages related to issues or problems with the video and the usb or memory, then those might give some clue as to why the hardware is just stopping responding.
I was a little less than precise in my wording: I do have the CLI on the connected display, but the system does not react to the keyboard.
When I switch to the SSD with the “old” 187 installation everything works just fine. System information here
During the week-end I give it a closer look. It is possible that the SSD I’ve used for the 188 installation could be faulty.
So I’ll also try a fresh 188 download and do a new clean installation on another SSD.
I first tried initial clean install of the 188 update on a new SSD disk again. However, after 1-2 hours the system stopped responding. At the same time I saw my network hosts were getting 169.x.x.x self-assigned IP-adresses.
I then tried a new clean 188 install using the same ISO download and back-up files from my 187 install. This time I noticed that something was wrong in the Fire Wall set-up. I 187 had 4 rules, only 2 being active. But having restored the set-up to the 188 installation all 4 were active. So I disabled those. I compared the remainder set-up with the187 installation. But after a couple of hours: Same thing. IPFire unresponsive and networks host getting 169.x.x.x addresses.
Then I made a new download of the 188 ISO and - using the last of my available SSD’s - made a fresh install. But this time I did not use any back-up files from my 187 installation. Rather I configured the system from scratch.
And this last installation works - at least for the last 5 days
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My conclusion:
An obscure DHCP issue.
The first 180 ISO download may have been “to early”
or
My 187 installation (updated from previous versions) might have had a flaw affecting the back-ups.
I suspect the latter, but if it is just my installation or a possible general issue I cannot tell.
Anyway - as mentioned - reconfiguring from scratch seems to have solved my issues.
Based on my 35+ years with IT, I know sometimes a total clean install and set-up it the way you need to go. But with good private local/documentation not a big problem. Just a bit time consuming .
And let me add: This completely new 188 installation so far works flawlessly. I see lower CPU and memory loads. Not that is was really an issue before. But to me is shows that the IPFire teams efforts optimizing works.
It may be possible that there is a flaw in the backup/restore process. I once had an issue where files that weren’t supposed to be backed up were in fact being included in it, which caused issues when restoring.
It is also possible for the restore to not fully propagate. This could happen if restoring over a weak wifi connection, for example, or just a glitch in the restore process. I’ve also had this happen. Simply re-restoring the backup a second time, solved the issue.
I’m not saying either of these scenarios occurred for you, but they are possible explanations. Either way, you got it up and running, so problem solved!
With all other systems (Windows, Apple) my experience have always been that I could only “just upgrade” until a certain time, were things just got too weird and stopped working and a really pure reinstall was the way to go.
And easily possible as long as you keep your documentation and how-to’s guides valid and make sure ALL essential data are properly stored and backed-up.
We all do that, don’t we?
I think there is an issue with upgrading because I updated to 188 and a couple of hours later things stopped working and reverted to 187. I have tried three times in the past two weeks to update and the same thing happens so I will just buy another SSD and do a fresh install instead of an upgrade since it seems 188 works as a fresh install.
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