help with amber light

Hi,

Typically you can determine the cause of an amber light using OpenManage, though we do not have support for that on pfSense/FreeBSD. There are a number of issues that can cause it and it's likely the cause may be recorded in the BMC system event log. It looks like it is possible to install freeipmi on some version of pfSense according to forum.pfsense.org/index.php and if you got that to work you can you use the ipmi-sel command to export the system event log and see if any problems are mentioned. Alternatively you can boot to our OpenManage Live CD from linux.dell.com/.../OMSA64-CentOS55-x86_64-LiveCD.iso which gives a Linux-based GUI as well as CLI that you can use to have full OpenManage access in that environment. Since it is a new-to-you server you may find the firmware needs to be updated among other things and the Live CD will let you do that, though at a minimum you should be able to just view the OpenManage GUI and see if there are any red X anywhere that might suggest the reason for the amber light. Let us know what you find out and if we can help interpret it.

You need to find out why it is turning amber ... it indicates a hardware problem, not a software problem.  You can boot to OMSA Live, open Server Administrator, then go to System, Logs tab to see what the hardware log says.

linux.dell.com/.../omsa-54-040308.iso

but it only happens when it boots pfsense up

I will try that and see

but if it was bad ram wouldn't it do it once the server is turned on I will be running OpenManage Live CD  in a few mins to see what that shows I will post what it says

ok I have download OpenManage Live CD  but I do I access the gui

is there a way to fix that

It could be an overflow of ECC memory corrections caused "so long" after the system boots up or by the increased memory usage, or something similar that is only manifested when pfsense starts.

ok I am on the gui now via the live cd but I have never used this so I am not sure where I go from here

IF that's what it is (which, let me remind you, we have NO idea what the error is), then you "might" be able to fix it by updating your system firmware (BIOS, ESM, RAID, DRAC, etc.).  HOWEVER, it may simply be bad RAM too.

ECC RAM is capable of correcting single-bit errors.  Everytime an error is corrected, the server logs it.  If it reaches a certain number, indicating "too many", then the system will issue an error/warning and stop counting/logging the corrections.  The more the RAM is used, the faster it reaches that threshold for the warning ... it is possible that the RAM usage for pfsense is putting it over the top for the error logging.  However, we don't know that this is what it is doing yet.

On the Desktop should be a link for OpenManage Server Administrator.  Open that, then click on System (on the left), then click the Logs tab.

Try root and calvin, but I believe it would be the username (root) and password you set up when it was booting up.

what is the username and password nothing is working

no username or password are working I tried the one I setup but nothing

Did you download 5.4 or 6.4?