Bug #8076
open
User can easily apply an unusable interface configuration after restore
Added by Adrian Zaugg about 7 years ago.
Updated over 5 years ago.
Category:
Backup / Restore
Description
When loading a configuration file from a different device (with other
NICs) to a freshly installed pfSense, it correctly detects a mismatch of
the network interfaces and redirects the user to the interface setup
page. If there are VLANs defined in the loaded config, the VLANs are
still bound to the non-existent NICs, thus the user has to open the VLAN
assigning page and correct this. Pressing then on save, pfSense executes
the change immediately leading under unlucky conditions to the loss of
the connection to the admin interface of pfsense.
In my opinion if pfsense discovers a mismatch in interface assignment
after restoring a configuration file, the changes made by the user to
VLANs and interface assignment should not happen immediately. It should
let the user finish all the reassignment work and then do the reboot of
the device like it does it always after restoring a config.
How to reproduce:
- do a fresh pfsense installation and boot, connect to the web-gui
- instead of following the presented wizard, chose Diagnostics >
Backup/Restore from the menu
load a config using VLANs originating from a different device, which
has other kind of NICs built in (different brand e.g.)
- when presented with the interface assignment page, change to the VLAN
page and reassign a VLAN to the inner interface
- press save
In the interface setup page, when a mismatch of the network interfaces is detected, there should be options to fix VLAN mismatches too. This way, pressing Save button would fix interfaces and VLANs in one single shot.
This is exasperated by the fact that in previous versions of pfSense when you got the "reassign interfaces" page after restoring a configuration file, you could tab over to the VLAN page to re-assign the physical interface for each VLAN. Now if you do that you simply lose all access to pfSense and have to hard reboot and get into the console to re-assign interfaces.
To make matters worse, if your LAN interface is a tagged VLAN, you're really stuck since you can't reassign a VLAN via the console because it's assigned to the wrong physical interface - you have to re-create a new VLAN instead.
- Subject changed from Loading configuration file on device with different NICs can close out admin to User can easily apply an unusable interface configuration after restore
- Category set to Backup / Restore
- Affected Version deleted (
2.4)
While it could be more clear, anything you need to do can be done after restore, but before attempting to apply changes. You can remap VLANs, interfaces, etc. Though in practice it's much easier to do a search/replace on your config.xml before restoring.
- Related to Bug #14591: Restoring with different interfaces (partially?) applies changes before reboot added
- Related to Bug #8089: VLAN page breaks after config restore to new hardware. added
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