You should check the logs to make sure it is being caused by an unrecognised hardware version. It might be something completely different and easily fixable. pfSense 2.1 will be based on FreeBSD 9.X and so will have far newer drivers. With the new six month release cycle this should be out around March. Even if it isn't there will probably be betas before then. Steve

Looks like you had fun with that!  ;) Nice detailed write up. Steve

Won't have a chance to try this out until a little later today but I just wanted to say thanks for the response. If I can get everything setup the way I hope to, I plan to write a very detailed tutorial as this has been a very frustrating experience.

It's not a Tier 1 architecture in FreeBSD these days anyhow… From /usr/src/UPDATING NOTE TO PEOPLE WHO THINK THAT FreeBSD 8.x IS SLOW ON IA64 OR SUN4V:         For ia64 the INVARIANTS and INVARIANT_SUPPORT kernel options         were left in the GENERIC kernel because the kernel does not         work properly without them.  For sun4v all of the normal kernel         debugging tools present in HEAD were left in place because         sun4v support still needs work to become production ready. So even if you could get them to work, they would be even slower than usual. See also: http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/committers-guide/archs.html

Thanks for the suggestion, i had not had time to try this until last night.  The BIOS does not let me set the SATA mode.  I did try an IDE DVD rom and still no dice.

i'm new in pfsense A good starting point: http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Main_Page

There seems to be known bug in which an interface can get stuck in loop cycling up and down. It happens if you have forced one of the interface settings rather than using auto. E.g. the link speed or the MAC address. Could this have been your problem? Steve Edit: See http://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/1572

+-+-+  Update  +-+-+ Removing the 3G USB modem and inserting it again, rebooting pfsense, Turning pfSense OFF/ON, … did NOT resolve this issue Here is what worked for me (at least for now) Under INTERFACES | (ASSIGN) | PPPs | SHOW ADVANCED OPTIONS I changed the following Set SIM PIN wait to "3" Put a check mark in Uptime Logging Put a check mark in Dial On Demand Regards,

@HiTekRedNek: ntop is part of the base? I don't think I have ntop on my v.1.2.3 box. When I look it up in the packages it says "check forum". The same thing goes for bandwidthd and darkstat. They all say they were built for pfsense 1.2.1. Currently the only tool I can use to kind of get a snapshot of bandwidth usage is the RRD graphs (which are not that great) and pftop to view the state table which is ok but I would like a tool with a web front end. sorry I was thinking pftop … not ntop ... ntop is an available package in 2.0.

Hmm, I have never tried installing using a keyboard and video card myself, I've always just used the serial console. It does seem that quite a few people are having a problem with the X-core firebox and pfSense 2.0 using the serial console though. See, here. Perhaps your video card is causing a hardware conflict? To rule out any hardware problem you could try installing 1.2.3 using the serial console, which should work fine. Steve

The first connection is a single-line MLPPP The second connection is 2-lines MLPPP There a third connection that uses 4-lines MLPPP but I did not want to try to set it up before I familiar myself with pfSense first. I'll set up two connections tomorrow. A regular PPPoe & 3G USB modem in fail-over mode and another one that uses single-line MLPPP & cable in fail-over mode using CFs L'll report my success  ;) as soon as I am done.

You can do either an embedded or full install on an SSD without any issues as pfSense, by itself, doesn't write very much.  If you are planning on using squid then make sure that you have an SLC SSD.

Maybe that doesn't work because you are not on 1.2.3 final. try going to diag, command, and enter 'df -h' The size of your partition should be around half of the image size. e.g. my 2G nano install shows 913M. I'm paranoid, but I would upgrade to 1.2.3-final before going to 2.0…

Thank you. I will accomplish this using a Mikrotik RB750 and a Ubiquiti AP. Best regards Kostas

so found the problem, despite having removed the open-vm-tools package (not recommended in the upgrade) it would seem it had not been cleaned out properly. i reinstalled under 1.2.3 the package and then redeleted. This time the upgrade seems to have worked with no hitchs. Thanks for the help  ;)

ok. I added a note to that doc wiki page that it might be AdBlock causing it as well, in case someone else hits the same issue.

@wallabybob: I think an easier procedure than getting your existing installation over to the SDD would be to download the appropriate memstick image gunzip it and physically write it to  USB stick put the SSD drive in the Soekris, boot from the USB stick and install to the SSD. That your hard drive is a vastly different size from the SSD makes it a bit fiddly to "copy the installation" from hard drive to SSD. ( The USB boot code is currently not working on the 6501, this should be fixed in a bios update soon. Until then, you're stuck moving drives about and fiddling. (http://soekris.com/net6501_technical_note)

Not easily, no. The reboot has to happen immediately after upgrade, and there isn't an easy way at this time to schedule upgrades.