Unable to Get WAN and LAN IP Adress on PFsense

[ismailbenmeri]

I am a new unraid user and recently obtained an old HP Server and was hoping to run multiple services on it through unraid. 

For staters, i thought i should begin by setting up my home network and installed Pf sense as VM. After half a day of troubleshooting the PCIE passthrough, I applied the RMRR patch and got it working. Here is my config : 

 

HP ProLiant ML310e Gen8 v2 :

-  Intel Xeon E3-1220v3 (3.1 GHz/4-core/8MB/80 W) Processor

- 12 GB ECC DDR3 RAM 

- Onboard NIC : Broadcom 5720

- PCIE NIC ( used by pfsense) : I started with the intel i350 and swapped it with and the intel PRO 82576 QUAD NIC because of the issue I will be describing below.

- Array of 5 disks with different specifiations and a samsung 850 evo as SSD cache

 

I followed the excellent guide provided by spaceinvader and got pfsense installed, the four port are correctly detected by pfsense. Then, I assigned the igb0 to WAN and igb1 to lan. My home network is fairly simple : Modem/router provided by ISP =>PF sense (WAN) =>PF sense (LAN)=>Unmanaged 24 switch=>Access points ( TP link AC1200 set to bridge mode)=>mutiple clients. 

Note that ISP provided modem/router does not have a bridge mode and i cannot use a separate fiber ONT, so i disabled the dhcp server on it and set the WAN connection to static and enabled the DHCP server on the PFsense LAN. 

The problem is i cannot get ping to the the default gateway of the wan connection ( ISP router) nor can i get the lan connection to hand out dhcp leases ( IP adresses) to clients. 

 

I spent days searching for solutions and tried pretty much everything i could find :  

- Leaving the dhcp server on the ISP router and setting the WAN to DHCP 

-Simplifying the network ( ISP router=>WAN=>LAN=>Windows PC)

- Static IP on LAN without DHCP server enabled so that i could at least get to the web configurator.

-Mutliple Reinstalls

- Flashing the I350 firmware ( I swapped later with the intel PRO 82756)           

- Tried another NIC ( the intel 82576 As mentionned up above)

- Made sure that WAN and LAN have different Subnet

- Plugged only lan to TP link AC so i can get to the webconfigurator 

I noticed that neither the ISP router nor the TP link AC1200 ( setup as router) give an IP adress to pf sense ( WAN or LAN) when i plug in the cable, nothing is displayed on either interfaces but other clients can get an IP adresses just fine. 

 

One day, when i got back from work, I decided to do another reinstall of Pfsense but this time I plugged the WAN and LAN cable beforehand ( I used the autodetection before) and it magically worked. Then I turned off the unraid box so that i could put everything back in my rack. When I turned everything back on, I could not get to the webconfigurator nor the internet but i was able to pîng the ISP router ( default gateway). When I reinstalled PF sense once again, I went back to not having a WAN nor LAN IP Adress. I tried to do the same install again ( with the cable plugged in, it did not work)

 

Is there anything on PF sense that could prevent it from getting an IP adress for the WAN connection ?

Why is the dhcp server not doing its job for the lan connection ?  

Do I need the WAN connection active so that I could get to the Web configurator through the LAN connection ? I am aware that accessing the Web configurator through the WAN connection is disabled on PF sense. 

if no, Why is something as simple as getting to the webconfigurator does not work ( LAN with static IP to PC with static IP with the same subnet) 

 

If you have any another solution i could try, please I am all ears. 

 

 

Thank you for your help  

 

 

 

 

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[ismailbenmeri]

Update : I tried to install PF sense on bare metal ( Same machine as the unraid box) and it worked flawlessly , I got a wan from the ISP router and was able to distribute DHCP leases through the LAN. 

So, this is definitely a virtualization issue : 

- Maybe the configuration of the VM is not set up properly : I followed the spaceinvader's Guide. Maybe it's a little dated now. I am running the latest stable version of unraid ( 6.12.3) and Pf sense (2.7.0). Maybe something changed. 

- Maybe the RMRR patch is messing with the way the nic is passed through but without it i get the QEMU Error.