Don’t let the word get out
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12 hours into memtest86 almost at pass 6, no errors, wtf…
Put it in the oven, 385 for 8 minutes. Upgraded the heat compound while in there. Boot back up, weird screen I’ve never seen before EFI shell v2.3, I guess because I pulled the CMOS? Type ‘exit’ goes into bios, reboot, does that EFI shell again so I re-install pfsense from usb- maybe issue was HDD related on the mobo side? If it still blows chunks after this, its time to buy a new aes-ni unit.
Woke up box crashed but with one difference, the nasty psychedelic screen it displays wasn’t static like it always was before but actually changing- so maybe some progress? Going to oven it again, but longer this time. Plus I’ve noticed during all of this trouble shooting my CPU temp is always the same, 26.9c, that just can’t be possible, wonder if the sensor input being bunk is related to a board issue or just coincidence.
So I tried to install centos7 on the old box, screen would go wonky right after hitting install. Made an ubuntu live usb, ran that live- good. Double clicked install, worked- ran for a few minutes then screen freaks out again (that bad RAM kind of screen freak out). Force reboot, ssh in, install stress.
Run stress $ stress -c 4 (to stress all four cores), no problem.
Run $ stress -c 4 -m 2 -d 1, immediate crash/screen freak.
Reboot, run $ stress -d 2 --hdd-bytes 512M, immediate crash/screen freak.
So its something to do with HDD IO I guess. I guess explains why pfsense would run stable when it was just a router/firewall, but when I used things like pfblocker and snort that write to the HDD, it would eventually crash.
Probably a bad chip somewhere on the board? Cut my losses and toss the board (keeping the chassis) ?
What HDD ports do you have? SATA & mSata? Any difference trying either, assuming you have both drive types? If you can rule out the HDD device itself, then it might be worth upgrading to a new system. I would have before this point 
I forgot to update this post, I got a new two core celeron unit in. The old bad appliance crashed when using two different sata (SSD, then spinning rust) then also on esata. I guess some small chip on the board is to blame.
Yeah, youd probably have to get the same board and start swapping components to try and fix it. There is no point in going that far unless you want a challenge!
Yeah not worth the time- I liked the idea of a fanless no moving parts low power build to host a web facing service like a word press site. With 4 NICs I was starting to imagine having one connected to my LAN and having the splunk server on it, and another connected to my DMZ and having web services, and a good iptable between the two.
Issue with the new box- it has an HDMI output, no other output, it worked fine when I plugged into an Asus monitor with HDMI input for when I installed and setup.
I now have an HDMI to VGA converter to use an older monitor (what I was using with the J1900 box) but the monitor does not get a signal, even after reboot of the new pfsense box. Verified converter works on that monitor with laptop’s HDMI output.
- Edit, before I send the J1900 to the scrap, I’m going to do another longer baking session just for giggles.
Could just be an issue of not being able to work out the right resolution for the monitor when going through the converter. Does your monitor not have dvi?
Its an old free-be that is only VGA. I plugged in the other monitor that has native HDMI, rebooted and it displayed, then switched to the adapter and old monitor and that outputted, so problem seems to be fixed now.
I also installed the wifi card that came with the J1900 unit that I never used (pulled it out when the box came in). Got inspired by a tutorial video of putting all your IoT on one access point, LAN on the other. The box is now a fully fledged all-in-one, router, firewall, IDS/IPS (got openappid going) and wifi access point haha. So next is making the right firewall rules to issolate IoT. Then re-do the DMZ interface too for some VMs on another box I want to face the internet- the whole thing/reason that got me on standalone pfsense hardware with your help.
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