pfSense

I have an ALIX board running a single ADSL/PPPoE link for the WAN on vr2.

I also have DHCP set up on vr2 (via OPT4) to get an address from the ADSL modem.

When I click on "Release" on status interfaces, it brings down my PPPoE link too.

This piece of code in the interfaces.inc -> interface_bring_down() is the culprit I think. I looked at the code for pfSense_interface_flags and don't really understand what it does.

if(does_interface_exist("$realif")) {
mwexec("/sbin/ifconfig " . escapeshellarg($realif) . " delete", true);
pfSense_interface_flags($realif, -IFF_UP);
mwexec("/usr/sbin/arp -d -i {$realif} -a");
}

I'm not sure, but I think that the pfSense_interface_flags might be causing my system to freeze at boot time when the system is "Configuring OPT4 interface. . . "
It's the same situation, which is that the physical interface is already up because it was configured during the WAN/PPPoE start process and something else is going on.