Hi Jimp, there was an ext-20-xdebug.ini there. I moved it out of the way, error seems to be gone. Thank you and kind regards, SnakeZZ

Ok, and you are able to boot the installer and complete the install but it fails to boot after that? Or it boots and plays the startup beeps at that point but just shows nothing on the console? What is the last thing shown there? Steve

The HA won't be live since the pfsync version is different but CARP failover works between them. Generally better to put the primary node into maintenance mode / disable CARP and then upgrade or reinstall. With older primaries it's easy to accidentally break the config since older versions didn't have safeguards like we have now.

It seems the issue was more banal than i thought. Removing completely the pfBlockerNG solved the issue, once removed a fresh package installation worked perfectly with no further issues. Note: Reinstalling from the Installed Packages tab didn't work, i had to completely remove it. Thanks Nicola

It seems that everyone's methods are different. Has no one ever done that ? https://www.iseepassword.com/create-bootable-usb-dvd-on-mac.html

Use the Mailreport package to get regular updates on the zpool and schedule a monthly scrub with the Cron package, it's not that hard.

@jimp This was the fix. I removed the SD card, and the installer worked fine. It does seem a bit bizarre because I did specify the SSD drive during the install wizard. The other weird detail is that the busted SD card did not prevent me from installing v2.3.5. Anyway, you win all the cookies.

Thank for the reply @Grimson. I looked over all of the information that you have sent me, but I am stumped on how to edit the boot portion of the memstick. I don't have a FreeBSD or another pfSense box, so I created a virtual instance using VMware. What I am struggling with is how to view the system log to find the device name of the device and when I can, how to use the commands that are shown in the example since the shell does not support them. Getting frustrated with this, but I am still hanging in there. Looking for a direction to go towards on how to solve this issue. Thank you in advance.

Gracias, Ill give it a try =]

What pfSense version is it running? You can always reset the config (or just the password) from the serial console. Steve Edit: Just checked and the reset button should work in 2.3.5. I tested that myself at the time.

That's just one slice. The actual installation files are on a separate partition on the memstick that can't be read by windows.

Using top to see io activity, both 2.4.3_1 and 2.4.4_1 are about the same. So my hunch was wrong that more disk writes are occurring. I still can't explain the behavior I've described but at least I'm not seeing more disk writes.

Thank you. I still don't understand where 172.x.x.x (private IP) is coming from? as it was set to default, why default is not picking up WAN IP? I've left Gateway as dynamic (it still displays 172.x.x.x address), but I've added Monitor IP 8.8.8.8 (Google DNS). I'm not sure if this is correct, but I can see now correct status in Status>Gateways

Probably some power saving feature that SD doesn't do.

@jimp I upgraded from 2.4.3_1 -> 2.4.4_1 and this time I had no issues. Thanks for the support and great product!

Thanks

Hi, Nuke the raid stuff - visit BIOS if needed. Btw : nuking means re reinstalling ... take config backups

In the end nothing helped but reinstalling. I was naturally afraid of doing so but it turned out: It was fast (with the exception of getting the image in the first place) and worked beautifully. So thanks for the assistance!