PFSense interfaces disappearing

Psyonus · January 10, 2020

Hey fellas I am hoping someone here can help me out.

I have an old HP 7800p with:

Core2Quad 6600

8gb Ram

120GB SSD

1TB HDD

1 Pci-e Gigabit Ethernet adapter

I have tired many times to install PFSense and have watched many videos on youtube showing installation however my issue seems hard to find in searches.

When I newly install it is PFSense is telling me I have two interfaces, re0 and em0, em0 is the built in jack and re0 is the pci-e card.

When I go through the setup pfsense does not give me a lan ip at the end both the lan and the wan are empty fields.

When I select option 1 to assign interfaces and choose not to setup vlans I tell pfsense the wan is re0 and pfsense does not ask me to assign lan.

After that I can not see a lan interface only an empty wan interface.

I also should note that I have tried some other hardware and was able to get a lan ip right away and enter the gui, I was never able to get internet from my wan with the ethernet connected to my fibre box but it might be that I need to power cycle my fibre box when I connect it to a new machine.

The hardware I used that got the lan ip was a server board with two built in ethernet ports that I have other purposes for so I really want to use this old HP machine for the router.

To be clear

After install:

LAN (lan) -> re0 ->

WAN (wan) -> em0 ->

After assigning interfaces:

WAN (wan) -> em0 ->

I don't understand why I never get a Lan ip e.g. 192.168.1.1/24 like others on youtube get by default

Why after assigning interfaces do I not get a lan interface anymore?

I have tried swapping the ports used etc

I tried OPNSense and it gave me a LAN ip right away after install so I don't understand why PFSense won't.

If anyone out there is able to help point me in the right direction I will comment if it works and hopefully anyone else who encounters this can get it resolved quickly.