Related topic:
http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=10629Summary: pfSense embedded installs only save RRD graph data on shutdown or reboot (via /etc/rc.shutdown and /etc/rc.reboot). If it suffers a non-graceful reboot, all RRD data since the last graceful shutdown or reboot will be lost. The solution is to add a cron job which saves this data to the /cf partition, making it persistent. I recently ran into this issue on my embedded pfSense deployment, and lost 6 months of logs. So, I found the above thread discussing the solution, however I had to update a couple things to work with version 2.0. I figured I'd share it here in the hopes it will help someone else.
Solution: You'll need to save your pfSense config to an XML file, add the following entry to the <cron> section (make sure to preserve the XML file format), and re-upload it to your system. It will reboot automatically and apply the changes. You can then log in via shell or console and look in /etc/crontab to make sure the entry got added, or check your System Log for log entries indicating that it has run on schedule.
Here is my config.xml cron entry:
<item>
<minute>0</minute>
<hour>0</hour>
<mday>*</mday>
<month>*</month>
<wday>*</wday>
<who>root</who>
<command><![CDATA[echo "RRD backup starting" |logger; /usr/bin/nice -n20 /etc/rc.backup_rrd.sh && echo "RRD backup complete" |logger || echo "RRD backup ERROR" |logger]]></command>
</item>
Which results in this entry in /etc/crontab:
0 0 * * * root echo "RRD backup starting" |logger; /usr/bin/nice -n20 /etc/rc.backup_rrd.sh && echo "RRD backup complete" |logger || echo "RRD backup ERROR" |logger
A few items of note:
- Runs at midnight every day; change to suit your needs.
- Calls /etc/rc.backup_rrd.sh which is the script which handles mounting /cf as read-write or read-only (previously the commands were placed directly in cron, presumably this script is new for 2.0).
- The <command> value is encapsulated with CDATA, which is necessary to preserve the non XML friendly characters like ampersands in the command string.
- Will log the start and subsequent success or failure of the backup script in the pfSense system log.
- This does increase filesystem writes (although not by very much), so be aware of this depending on the flash storage you are using.
Hope this helps someone!
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