Graceful Shutdowns for pfSense

5 Tips to Shutdown pfSense Gracefully

With any electronic appliance, it is important to develop good habits which improve product longevity and decrease potential downtime. These habits then transform into best practices.

At Netgate®, we’re continually identifying best practices. This Why To Series of documents is our way of relaying those practices to you.

This edition focuses on graceful shutdowns of your pfSense® Security Gateway. An abrupt power loss to the firewall can potentially cause data corruption, depending on what activities are happening in pfSense behind the scenes. Just as you wouldn’t shut down a system during an update, you don’t want to pull the power on a pfSense firewall while a backup is being performed, a log file written, or a config file is being updated.

An abrupt shutdown can be caused in a number of ways. The most common causes are a power outage, pulling the power cord out directly, or accidently turning off a power strip. “Dirty” power can also cause intermittent power loss.

Here are 5 simple tips to ensure a graceful shutdown to develop good habits and best practices.