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If I have to replace the NUC, I will ensure next time that I ask the forum for examples of good bare metal OPNSense hardware options - ones that are proven to be very reliable even if they cost a bit more.  I guess I may have kind of got lucky this time via a workaround, but I don't want this to ever happen again!!!  🤞

Hey Guys,

Firstly, let me thank you all for the very helpful information that you've been able to provide me - especially those of Greg_E, Cookie Monster, and Meyegru!

Secondly, after reconnecting with the DreamQuest support team (or maybe it was you Cookie Monster?!?), they sent me an email yesterday advising me to run 'pciconf -lv | grep -A3 -B1 ethernet' from the OPNSense shell which would let me see the make and model of my ethernet NIC, which ended up being a Realtek NIC (right on the money here Meyergru) - more specifically an 'RTL8111/8168/8211/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller'.  As such, the following video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeXQueTipH0) showed me how to install the Realtek 'os-realtek-re' driver (which was also covered by Greg_E here).  After doing this as well as ensuring that Interface Settings for Hardware CRC, TSO, and LRO were all set to disabled, I rebooted to the NUC and decided to fire up ExpressVPN on my main PC and tried downloading a large file (26GB), and currently, it has completed over 5GB of the file download.  Normally, even just firing up ExpressVPN would generally cause OPNSense to drop all network connections, but downloading any files with the VPN going would result in a 100% drop in network connections with me not even getting 200MB downloaded.

My wife is about to begin a WFH shift, so I guess we will get to see if this work around continues to work, but I must say, so far, so very good indeed.

You have no idea how grateful I am to everybody helping me get over this hurdle.  I can only hope that it continues to work as intended as this will mean I now have a long-term Nortons replacement that will serve us perfectly here at home both now and into the future.

Again Guys, thank you so very much indeed for all of your help!!!  😜🙏

To Greg:

RE: your question about the Adtran device having a problem.  Prior to incorporating the NUC into my home network, the Adtran NTU in conjunction with my ISP provided TP-Link AX-5400 WI-FI 6 modem/router worked seamlessly and without fault.  Before incorporating the NUC into the equation, I upgraded my router to a TP-Link Archer BE800 BE19000 Tri-Band Wi-Fi 7 Router which honestly, worked like a dream.  As my PCs have both 10 and 2.5 Gbps ethernet ports, this router worked very well.  It is because of the costs associated every year by running Nortons over my entire home network had blown out so badly, that I decided to incorporate the NUC running OPNSense into the home network, and ever since I did this, I have had no end of troubles.


To Cookie Monster:

I have checked the NUC's BIOS and all references to WIFI were all disabled (there was nothing WAP related anywhere in the BIOS).


To Any and Everybody:

Does anyone know how I can access pertinent logs via the VGA CLI as I am unable to access OPNSense from a browser when all network connectivity is lost?  What would also be nice is for someone also to tell me how I might copy these logs (assumed files) from the OPNSense CLI to a USB drive?  And lastly, to whom can I send these logs for them to possibly work out what is going on here?

Seriously, this problem is fast becoming a problem for us with my wife not being happy with the network going down as she is sometimes on phone shifts when working from home.  Anything people can provide here - even the simplest of things that might rectify what is going on, that would be greatly appreciated!!!  😉🙏

Hey Guys,

This thread is a continuation of this thread from about 4-5 months ago (https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?topic=44356.msg231128#msg231128).

My setup is as follows:
- ISP connection is 750Mbps down and 100Mbps up.
- My ISP has given me an Adtran 422G GFast NTU to connect to the internet.
- I have a DreamQuest Pro N5105 NUC with 2 x 1 Gbps ethernet ports that utilises an Intel 3165NGw network interface card (NIC) as a bare metal OPNsense device running version 25.7.2 before providing access to the rest of my home network.  The NUC that runs OPNSense runs all firewall, DHCP, and DNS activities for my home network.

What happens is that generally (not all the time) whenever I connect to a VPN or download files, the connection to the internet drops.  The unfortunate thing is it generally drops a few times a day when my wife works from home which is fast becoming a problem for us.  I have noticed that I can still access the OPNSense system on the NUC but have no idea what I'd be doing in this regard.  Some people have said that I need to have a look at certain access logs to see what is going on, but seriously, I'd need very specific instructions on how to do this as technology is really starting get beyond me these days even taking into account that I was once an MSCP in MS Windows 3.1... 🤣

In the previous post, someone suggested that I ascertain which NIC my NUC was using as I might need a dedicated NIC driver to alleviate the problem.  I notice that there is a post RE: the Intel 3165NGw NIC on the OPNSense forums, but this was ~8 years ago now (https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?topic=6452.0).  Additionally, this post made the following statement but am not sure what in fact it actually means - "But I think that only client mode will be supported by the driver! So you can't use this wifi card to offer an AP on OPNsense."

If anybody could help me get to the bottom of what is going on here, it would be very much appreciated indeed.  Why this keeps happening to my setup I don't know, but I hear of others using OPNSense having no problems whatsoever...  😭😞

Hey,

I tried reaching out to my NUC manufacturer, and they didn't reply.  Have just asked question again.

Having said the above, no-one has responded as to whether OPNsense supports Bluetooth devices or not.  Does anyone know whether there is a way to get Bluetooth to work under OPNsense?!?

I have a Logitech KB that supports Bluetooth ONLY connectivity with up to 3 devices.  Unfortunately, this keyboard does not support USB.

Hey Bart,

Thank you for that - will give it a shot over the next few days...  😉

Dave.

Bart,

I'm not sure how to view the logs post-mortem.  As I have to reboot the device each time, are not the logs wiped?  As I cannot access 192.168.1.1 when the device crashes, I cannot get to see what's going on.  When I reboot the device and I look at what I think are the logs, there are hundreds of entries.  Do you know of a link that you could point me to that might help here at all?

I seriously want to make OPNsense work for me, but I am still struggling with how to set it up.

1. Give people access to my Plex server from outside my network.
2. See my HD Homerun device that is on my network.
3. And being able to do large file downloads without crashing is vital for me.

I am kind of using a KVM device of sorts.  My TV has three inputs and my Bluetooth Logitech keyboard and mouse are able to connect to three different devices at the push of a button.  Thus why I was hoping to get Bluetooth working. In a previous post, someone said that the bottom line in the boot up script (as per the attached pic) was to do with Bluetooth - but I honestly have no idea.

I live in a small 2BR unit and as such, space is of a premium.  In fact, I'm running two PCs in one from a single Phantek Enthoo Evolv X PC case.  One being my main rig and the other being the dedicated Plex server.  The NUC is in another very tight location but can be connected to the TV by a 10m HDMI 2.1 cable run that is run through the walls and ceiling.  Thus, running Bluetooth would mean that rebooting the device would only require the push of a button.  Or, as I said to someone else, if I could get it to automatically login as root by way of a script or something, then there would be no need for a keyboard at all, yes?  Or, am I supposed to access the logs directly from the NUC using the CLI access - I.E., directly from the NUC itself?!?

Again, any help that you can provide would be greatly appreciated!!!  😉

Fastboot,

When the OPNsense box drops internet connection, I have to plug in a USB keyboard when I reboot the device so that I can login.  If the device automatically logged into root upon boot up, then I would not need to worry about a keyboard at all for the device as I access it from another device via MS Edge.

Hi Guys,

I've been having heaps of problems with my bare metal OPNsense unit when downloading files.  This results in me regularly having to reboot the NUC running OPNsense.  Once rebooted, the network comes back up.  When I reboot the device, I always have to manually plug in a USB keyboard to be able to log back on.

What would help is me being able to access the NUC via a Bluetooth keyboard, but I've done quite a few searches on the topic and have come up empty handed.  If I cannot run a Bluetooth keyboard, is there a way for it to automatically login as root without me needing to enter the username and password?  Additionally, does anyone have any thoughts on while downloading either by torrents, or very recently, it crashing about 4 times when downloading some games over Steam?!?  🤔

Any thoughts here would be greatly appreciated...  😉

Got the PC thing sorted out, and it wasn't the OPNsense.

One issue I am having though is when I download stuff (torrents) using VPN Express as my VPN client and Vuze to download the material, my OPNsense box crashes within a few minutes - or should I say, I can no longer ping the OPNsense box from any PC on the LAN.  I've restarted all networking devices (the 2 x WAPs), and everything is still down.  Once I restart the OPNsense box, everything comes back up.  Any thoughts on this?!?  🤔

Thank you for that - will take me a bit to look into this.

One thing that I do note has happened is that my shared drives no longer seem to work.  I have two PC's.  One is my main rig while the other is a Plex Server.  I was previously able to see and access the drives of each PC from the other PC, but now this is not working.  Do I need to do something in OPNsense to get this working - and, how do I assign an IP address to a specific MAC address?  These as well as being able to do port forwarding which I think I know how are the only things left for me to work out at the moment.

I did see an article that I thought might help regarding accessing drives from different PCs (https://www.thomas-krenn.com/en/wiki/OPNsense_add_interface#:~:text=Select%20the%20desired%20network%20interface%20under%20Interfaces%20%E2%80%A3,the%20desired%20IP%20configuration.%20Click%20on%20Apply%20changes.), but this didn't seem to do the trick - at least, I couldn't work it out from what the person said.

DSeven,

Well, I got there in the end - with much thanks to you and Patrick M. Hausen.

One minor issue though is getting the DHCPv6 server under the services to run.  Any thoughts as to what might be causing this, and when it comes to letting people through to access my Plex server, I'm assuming that I do this under the Firewall/NAT/Port Forward menu item?

Again, please accept my thanks here for all that you done to help - very much appreciated indeed!!! 😜

Oh my goodness, getting old is not fun.  I should have thought of this as I thought the issue was it not being HTTPS compliant due to the HTTPS being strike through on the pic.

I really do hate getting old as your brain is nowhere like it used to be when younger.  I was an MSCP back in the day on Windows 3.1.  Again, thank you for your patience here.  I will try again tomorrow when my wife's not working from home (as she is today)... 😜

Hey DSeven, did a newb error.  I plugged the ethernet cable from my OPNsense bare metal box into the WAN port of the router that I had configured to just be a WAP.  After plugging it into just a normal network port, I was able to get the network up and running - I.E., I could ping the OPNsense box but could not get through to it from my browser as per attached pics.  Any chance in letting me know what I am doing wrong here?  🤔

DSeven, well I disabled the router's DHCP and gave it a static 192.168.1.2 address, and the attached pic is what occurred during the bootup of the OPNsense bare metal device...  😒

After a minute or so, it continued to boot but my PC couldn't see either 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.1.2

Any thoughts on where I should go from here?