OBSD 3.5 Firewall losing ip configuration on external interface

[gdap]

I recently put a new firewall into active use. Every day, the external interface of this FW loses it's IP configuration during the night. Running ifconfig or rebooting resolves the issue, and it runs during the workday with no problems.

I am at a loss as to how to proceed with this. I can't find any obvious reasons why this is happening. Can anyone suggest what could be causing this or what steps I might take to get more information?

Though comfortable in a shell, I'm still quite a novice with OBSD, so any suggestions as to what logs I should be looking at or rules that might be helpful in my pf.conf would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Greg

 

[robertostraussman]

Greg,

First, how is your external interface configured? IE: is it DHCP or is it static? Next, in either case, how did you give the machine the information? IE: /etc/hostname.if or an ifconfig line in /etc/rc.local - or do you do ifconfig from the command line?

In the morning, when you come into the office, check to see if the machine has rebooted. IE: check uptime. If it is rebooting each night, then that start to explain why you are loosing your configuration. That would possibly also mean you configured the IP's for that interface manually on the command line.

If your machine has rebooted - then check the cronjob for any user with permissions to restart the machine (start with root) and see if there is a cronjob to restart each day.

PF rules are the next step - they are probably not the reason you are loosing the config.

Let me know,

Roberto.

 

[gdap]

Thanks for the suggestions Roberto.

The interface is configured with a static IP through the hostname file. There is no cron job to reboot, and even if it were rebooting, the interface is configured correctly on a reboot.

A few more notes and possibly the issue has been resolved.

Around the end of October, the interface went down and would not come back up regardless of reboot or configuration. even a power cycle failed to correct the problem. After some testing, I found that reseating the network cable on the external interface resolved the issue. Since then I have not lost the functionality on the external interface.

I am certain that this has something to do with the earlier problem, but I still am uncertain as to how the configuration on the external interface could be lost, or why running ifconfig would ever have resolved the problem.

I am putting the Firewall back into active use again today, so we'll see if the problem continues tomorrow.

Greg