The ifstated conf taken from OpenBSD uses ping syntax from this OS. But there is a difference in the waittime (maxwait) parameter. OpenBSD uses lowercased "w" with seconds, but FreeBSD uses uppercased "W" with milliseconds.

Fix: See this inline patch:

--- ifstated.conf-sample        2010-09-10 00:10:44.000000000 +0200
+++ ifstated.conf-patched       2011-12-03 13:40:17.000000000 +0100
@@ -18,12 +18,12 @@
 # The "net" addresses are other addresses which can be used to determine
 # whether we have connectivity. Make sure the hosts are always up, or
 # test multiple ip's, 'or'-ing the tests.
-net = '( "ping -q -c 1 -w 1 192.168.6.8 > /dev/null" every 10 && \
-    "ping -q -c 1 -w 1 192.168.3.8 > /dev/null" every 10)'
+net = '( "ping -q -c 1 -W 1000 192.168.6.8 > /dev/null" every 10 && \
+    "ping -q -c 1 -W 1000 192.168.3.8 > /dev/null" every 10)'

 # The peer addresses below are the real ip addresses of the OTHER firewall
-peer = '( "ping -q -c 1 -w 1 192.168.6.7 > /dev/null" every 10 && \
-    "ping -q -c 1 -w 1 192.168.3.7 > /dev/null" every 10)'
+peer = '( "ping -q -c 1 -W 1000 192.168.6.7 > /dev/null" every 10 && \
+    "ping -q -c 1 -W 1000 192.168.3.7 > /dev/null" every 10)'

 state auto {
        if $carp_up


Patch attached with submission follows:
How-To-Repeat: The problem persists.