Unable to access PA-500 via GUI/SSH on v4.1.7

[kalyanram.piratla]

Greetings,

I have a pair of PA-500s running HA version 4.1.7.  The web interface (GUI) and SSH access to active device was lost for some unknown reason.  The only configuration change done was to set action for a security rule to deny which otherwise was allow.  The changes were committed and firewall was good enough for the next 90mins.  After 90mins, I was unable to login to the GUI or SSH and the webpage wasn't responding.  This did not interrupt any session/traffic though.

Upon failing over onto Passive, and then rebooting the Active (by pulling the power cable off), the firewall was accessible via GUI and SSH. 

Just wanted to know what can cause this issue and what logs in the tech support file or system logs should I have to look into if such an issue occurs again so that I know where things have gone wrong?

Any ideas/suggestions on this are very much appreciated

Many Thanks

Kalyan

[mikand]

You might have stumbled upon the following issue which was addressed in 4.1.8:

"

43575 – After upgrading to PAN-OS 4.1.7, the management interfaces (web interface and CLI) sometimes stopped responding due to a conflict between the authentication and logging processes.

"

The above is available if you go to https://support.paloaltonetworks.com and (if logged in) click on Software Updates and then the pdf for 4.1.8 22 Sep 12: PAN-OS-4.1.8-RN-revA.pdf

[licenselu]

Hello,

I already faced this problem too in 4.1.7. Release 4.1.8 solves this issues but...introduce another one (configuration synchronization between cluster member) !!

Use 4.1.8 h1 or higher.

Regards,

HA

[mbutt · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Currently the recomended release on 4.1.x is 4.1.8-h3.

Thank you

Numan

[mikand]

Why not 4.1.9 which has been out for a week now?

[Retired Member]

We are currently evaluating 4.1.9 release as more devices upgrade to that release. We expect to be in a better position to recommend 4.1.9 within the next couple of weeks if things continue to be positive with that release. Hence per Numan's response, our current recommendation is 4.1.8-h3.

-Richard

[kalyanram.piratla]

Well..it was just a one off issue.. leaving it monitored at the moment and then will upgrade to 4.1.8-h3.

Thank you all.

[mikand]

Where can I then find whats the currently latest available recommended version to use in production?

Because with that explanation I interpret this as, for example, PANOS 5.x should be avoid for the next 6 months or so!?

Doesnt PA do any quality assurance before a new version (major or minor version) is released to the public?

[mharding]

They do.

Let's look at this another way. Windows 8 came out in October. I bet very few businesses have installed Windows 8 on 100% of their production desktops. If WIndows 8 has bugs, is it Microsoft's fault for releasing a buggy OS? No. You can't test for every scenario, and PAN-OS is always improving with new features.

If PAN-OS was perfect the first time, we'd all be running PAN-OS 2.1 still.