This makes me want to cry! WebGUI instability on all different hardware!

[roohoo]

As requested

[lmoore]

Interestingly, this afternoon I grabbed another computer: A Ryzen 3900x-powered machine with 128GB of RAM, an M.2 nvme drive, and a Quadro video card. I installed OPNSense with a bare setup (just interfaces configured) and started it up.

Now, around two hours later, I have exactly the same issue: That's a third completely different computer used to install and run OPNSense that has the webGUI die in a few hours of running!

I use Firefox (ESR) primarily and have it and MS-Edge operating in In-Private mode. I only have two extensions installed in each of them.

On the rare occasion the browser has timed out, the most I've ever needed to do is a browser refresh to regain the login page. I typically have the browser signed in to OPNsense for days without issue and no timeouts.

When you first sign in to the Web GUI, is the Uptime being reported correctly and does the time on your computer match OPNsense?

The next time this happens, instead of rebooting, select option 11 to restart all services.

Which time zone have you selected in OPNsense?

In your environment, where is your DNS server located?

When you SSH to OPNsense, do you use the IP address or FQDN?

The screen shot you posted on the 18th shows your memory usage at 76.5%, has it gone above this mark?

[roohoo]

When you first sign in to the Web GUI, is the Uptime being reported correctly and does the time on your computer match OPNsense?

The next time this happens, instead of rebooting, select option 11 to restart all services.

Which time zone have you selected in OPNsense?

In your environment, where is your DNS server located?

When you SSH to OPNsense, do you use the IP address or FQDN?

The screen shot you posted on the 18th shows your memory usage at 76.5%, has it gone above this mark?

When you first sign in to the Web GUI, is the Uptime being reported correctly and does the time on your computer match OPNsense?

It is, occasionally, correct but most of the time it's >20,000 days.  OPNSense time is correct

The next time this happens, instead of rebooting, select option 11 to restart all services.

I have tied this.  Sometimes it works, most of the time it doesn't have any effect.

Which time zone have you selected in OPNsense?

Europe/London

In your environment, where is your DNS server located?

It's the OPNSense box.

When you SSH to OPNsense, do you use the IP address or FQDN?

IP address [ssh root@192.168.2.1]

The screen shot you posted on the 18th shows your memory usage at 76.5%, has it gone above this mark?

I'm not sure I trust this figure but it often goes above this.  At the moment it's 93.48% - that's nearly 19GB!  If this is correct, I put it down to either ZFS or FreeBSD making use of some free RAM.  Here's the output of a top shell command:

1568 processes:1 running, 1567 sleeping
CPU:  0.9% user,  0.0% nice,  1.6% system,  0.0% interrupt, 97.5% idle
Mem: 11G Active, 1250M Inact, 4031M Laundry, 1685M Wired, 72K Buf, 1048M Free
ARC: 760M Total, 239M MFU, 364M MRU, 32M Anon, 13M Header, 110M Other
     538M Compressed, 1384M Uncompressed, 2.57:1 Ratio
Swap: 8192M Total, 916M Used, 7276M Free, 11% Inuse

  PID USERNAME    THR PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE    C   TIME    WCPU COMMAND
11658 root          1  68    0    55M    25M lockf    0   0:00   5.13% php
21957 root          1  21    0    20M  6528K CPU2     2   0:02   2.54% top
  344 root       1500  68    0   657M   295M accept   0 100:31   0.46% python3.13
14678 root          4  20    0    53M  7920K kqread   3   4:17   0.23% syslog-ng
96093 root          2  37    0    24M  6424K select   3   0:00   0.13% ntpd
24195 unbound       6  20    0   134M    38M kqread   1   3:23   0.06% unbound
93316 root          1  36    0    14M  2024K bpf      1   0:00   0.05% filterlog
42146 root          1  68    0    13M  1536K select   0   0:11   0.05% dhcp6c
11732 nobody        1  20    0    15M  1816K select   5   0:29   0.04% dnsmasq
95265 root          1  20    0    28M  7752K select   1   0:17   0.01% python3.13
41669 root          1  20    0    28M  5000K select   0   0:05   0.01% python3.13
65213 _flowd        1  20    0    13M  1660K select   2   0:06   0.01% flowd
33021 root          1  20    0    32M  5428K nanslp   0   0:08   0.01% python3.13
39760 root          1  20    0    13M  1256K select   5   0:16   0.01% powerd
57172 root          1  20    0    53M    27M nanslp   1  35:15   0.00% python3.13
80715 root          1  20    0    20M  7668K select   4   0:00   0.00% sshd-session
36291 root          1  20    0    14M  1528K kqread   3   0:01   0.00% rtsold
96883 nobody        1  20    0    13M  1212K sbwait   2   0:02   0.00% samplicate
38379 root          1  20    0    14M  1508K select   1   0:01   0.00% rtsold
76958 root          1  20    0    23M  6984K kqread   4   0:08   0.00% lighttpd
34669 _dhcp         1  20    0    14M  1684K select   1   0:01   0.00% dhclient
98197 root          1  68    0    14M  1616K nanslp   4   0:01   0.00% cron
49260 root          1  20    0    69M    14M accept   4   0:01   0.00% php-cgi
91065 root          1  20    0    53M    13M accept   5   0:01   0.00% php-cgi
90927 root          1  26    0    60M  8192B accept   1   0:01   0.00% <php-cgi>
  342 root          1  68    0    29M  8192B wait     3   0:01   0.00% <python3.13>
21933 root          1   4    0    14M  1612K select   3   0:01   0.00% dhclient
 9902 root          1  20    0    69M    14M accept   0   0:01   0.00% php-cgi
96048 root          1  20    0    53M  9440K accept   2   0:01   0.00% php-cgi
82910 root          1  20    0    53M    11M accept   3   0:00   0.00% php-cgi
 4016 root          1  20    0    53M    14M accept   2   0:00   0.00% php-cgi
 3936 root          1  20    0    53M    24M accept   2   0:00   0.00% php-cgi
47989 root          1  68    0    55M    24M lockf    0   0:00   0.00% php
68226 root          1  68    0    55M    24M lockf    0   0:00   0.00% php
90853 root          1  68    0    55M    24M lockf    4   0:00   0.00% php
35933 root          1  68    0    55M    24M lockf    4   0:00   0.00% php
13691 root          1  68    0    55M    24M lockf    2   0:00   0.00% php
60305 root          1  68    0    55M    24M lockf    1   0:00   0.00% php
94602 root          1  68    0    55M    24M lockf    4   0:00   0.00% php
30761 root          1  68    0    55M    24M lockf    0   0:00   0.00% php

[Patrick M. Hausen]

With top running type "o" for order, than "res" for resident size followed by ENTER. Other possibilities are e.g. "swap" instead of "res". Lets try to find out who is using all that memory and why.

Also with the fresh install up and running could you try to disable Interfaces: Neighbors: Automatic Discovery?

[lmoore]

I've recently set up a test system with only one NIC, there is no WAN interface as yet.

I set up a number of Aliases using URL Table (IPs) to consume as much memory as possible by the firewall.

I then reduced the installed RAM on the test system to 2GB.

The system is "thrashing" quite a bit and as the HDD in the system has a spindle, it is quite audible.

On occasions the widgets have failed to load and a refresh of the page will eventually bring up all the data.

I've not been able to reproduce the problem when the browser is unable to connect to the Web GUI.

I suspect your fundamental problem is due to defective RAM. However, I don't think it is defective in the region where the kernel is loaded - OPNsense would be crashing and most likely with a panic if it was.

I've included information from vmstat (systat -ivmstat 1) as well as from top, as per Patrick's suggestion.

My production system has 16GB of RAM and I've never seen the RAM usage go up high, it's currently sitting just below 24%.

You need to identify what is using up all your memory - perhaps tables are being updated, though I think it is something else.

Do you have lots of tables being loaded from URL's in Aliases?

If you were to use a vanilla installation with rules to allow you connectivity to the Internet and to configure DNS in its most simplest form, may be the memory usage would be reduced. You could then add other services and see which one starts consume your RAM.