pfSense

I am using pfSense on virtual machines on VMware, and noticed the following services do not start properly on the first boot after upgrading :

• HAproxy
• vmware-guestd
• vmware-kmod

It is annoying, and it feels like just a little bit of tweaking could fix it, because either of the following do the trick :

• On the next reboot when in this state, everything works
• Pushing the start button for HAproxy makes it start
• For some reason, I think vmware stuff should be loaded in a specific order, like first starting vmware-kmod then vmware-guestd

Combined with #3013, this makes upgrading a CARP cluster quite troublesome, since :

• Upon starting, there is already a timeframe where network/CARP master is up, but HAproxy is not (even when it will start up properly)
• If HAproxy did not start up properly, then I have to log in ASAP to the admin screen and do one of the following :
  • Start up the service (though if VMware-related services refuse to start up for some other reason or the other, I have to reboot anyway)
  • Reboot and then face further downtime where the HAproxy is killed, but CARP is still up for one minute while the instance reboots and the slave takes over.
    • I am currently working around this by disconnecting the virtual NIC when rebooting and forcing the slave to take over.