0

I have pfsense box that I use just for testing and learning. Today i plugged it in with the intention of deploying it to production and got the following error:

Fatal trap 12: page fault while in kernel mode
cpuid = 0; apic id=00
fault virtual address = 0x8
fault code = supervisor write data, page not present
instruction pointer = 0x20:0xffffffff81017ea9
stack pointer = 0x28:0xffffffff824646z0
frame pointer = 0x28:0xffffffff824648f0
current process = 0 (swapper)
thread pid 0 tid 100000
Stopped at vesa_configure+0xbb9: niv1 $0xffffffff, (%rcx,%rax.1)

I'm doing a memtest on the machine now and it's 68% complete with no errors so far. After that is complete I'm going to test the HDD. However, I also get the same error when i try to boot the firewall appliance with a pfsense bootable usb.

My console does not respond to key press after the error so I'm not sure how to troubleshoot via the command line. What does this error mean? How do you get past it?

jtlindsey
  • 4,346
  • 4
  • 45
  • 73

1 Answers1

1

The memory test had no errors after 2 passes. I cancelled it because all the other troubleshooting I could do was faster than letting the test run. If I didn't find anything I was going to let the memtest run overnight.

After seeing a user in the pfsense forum say they have seen an incident where the problem was caused by the monitor (reply #2), I did some troubleshooting beyond my original configuration:

Powered off the unit, disconnected the monitor and tried a spare monitor and a spare VGA cable.
Result: PFSense working!

Powered off the unit, and put the original VGA cable with the spare monitor.
Result: Original Error again.

Powered off the unit, and put the spare VGA cable with the original monitor.
Result: PFSense working!

I've rebooted multiple times and still have no more errors. So i'm concluding that something in pfsense, my motherboard or a combination of the two is sensitive to VGA cables giving bad signals.

jtlindsey
  • 4,346
  • 4
  • 45
  • 73