Dear All

Here's a question that could definitely be a catch 22 which needs some creative thinking which is beyond my hands on experience. 

I have an unRAID server which is fully encrypted as per SpaceInvader's extremely well thought through instructions.  Just recently I installed an ethernet quadboard into the machine and installed pfsense on a VM (again many thanks to SpaceInvader).

Everything works just brilliantly.  The pfsense LAN port is connected to the switch and the server ethernet port is connected to the same switch.

As per SpaceInvaders instructions the pfsense ports are essentially physically separated from the server port.

The issue I have came to light when we had a power outage (the machine is on a UPS but the time ran beyond the support time for the battery.). When the machine is restarted the discs and the services will only restart once the passphrase is re-entered.  Without the VM starting it is not possible to log into the server.  I set the machine up with a fixed IP.

The server normally runs headless and my workaround has been to hook up a monitor and keyboard and start the machine from the OS GUI option.  

Has anyone any ideas that could point to a neater solution?  If I've missed something obvious here I don't mind being called stupid!!

A remote start option as described using an external FTP server won't work as the server hasn't any internet access until the pfsense VM starts.

La France

 

 

1 hour ago, lafrance said:

Without the VM starting it is not possible to log into the server.  I set the machine up with a fixed IP.

Why? With a fixed IP, you should be able to log in directly to that IP. What happens if you try?

4 minutes ago, jonathanm said:

Why? With a fixed IP, you should be able to log in directly to that IP. What happens if you try?

Thanks for the quick reply.  When I try that the connection tries to resolve the SSL certificate that's initially needed for the disc encryption set-up.  I thought initially that would be the simplest solution as well.

That makes no sense to me. I'm pretty sure disk encryption has NOTHING to do with SSL browser authentication. Did you try opening https://192.168.X.X or whatever your fixed IP is? It should give you a security warning, but it also should allow you to continue anyway.

On 11/1/2019 at 5:58 PM, jonathanm said:

That makes no sense to me. I'm pretty sure disk encryption has NOTHING to do with SSL browser authentication. Did you try opening https://192.168.X.X or whatever your fixed IP is? It should give you a security warning, but it also should allow you to continue anyway.

Hi Jonathan

In the end you were absolutely correct.  With the pfsense VM down it was possible to access the unraid GUI via the fixed IP of the server.  It was all a bit odd though as I'd first tried it with a Windows machine and no matter what I did it  just kept coming up with the XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.unraid.net.  I then had another go with a machine running Ubuntu and that worked without any problems.

Thanks for your help.

La France