Fixed in 1.2.3.

The key here is whats the difference between "normal" mode and "safe" mode? According to http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9781593271510/start_me_upexclamatory_the_boot_process

Boot FreeBSD in safe mode

FreeBSD's safe mode turns on just about every conservative option in the operating system. ATA hard disks run without DMA or write caching, limiting their speed but increasing their reliability by working around cabling issues and other physical problems. EISA slots are not probed, and ACPI is disabled. On i386 systems, SMP is disabled. USB keyboards will no longer work in single-user mode. This option is useful for disaster recovery and debugging older or otherwise troublesome hardware.

If your system's performance in safe mode is adequate for your requirements you could stick with safe mode (though don't you need to be present to force a "safe" mode boot?) otherwise you may be better off investigating the problem so you can attempt to rectify it. If you want to investigate I suggest a place to begin might be to see what happens when you boot without the 4 port Sun card.

Gave up and used a Celeron 1.7, 256mgs, and a Via board. 3 Intel Pro 100 nics.
All I did was plug the CF card+adapter into the other system, ran the basic config, and BAM. Works great.

@karsh:

What is the performance diff between the embedded and the full version?

The performance only depends on the hardware you throw at it. Network throughput doesn't differ by booting from HD or CF.

+1

I totally agree. From my non developeer point of view, it seems to be the best way to have secure upgrade on embedded.

And if a flash goes wrong, simply plug your console cable and choose the other boot option!

If we want to save our RRD graphs, we must have them on the config partition too.

Devs, is there a problem with this solution? (except time :) )

After much time perusing my Award Bios I finally got DMA turned off and now I have it installed and running.

Thanks for the push!

Thank you for the quick post. I was under the impression the GUI was a default option. Thanks again for your help.

hi

i have the same issue with different 8 brand routers, it only worked with static ip on wan side of pfsense box, but i finally i configured my routers as bridges only, so my wan takes its IP from ISP, all pfsense boxes working like charm, and i am accessing all of them from wan and controlling all of them from home and from my work

hadi57

Check the 1.2.2 release announcement.

http://blog.pfsense.org/?p=351

To get notifications of updates, send a blank email to announce-subscribe@pfsense.com

I'm not sure that's the case, if I reboot the pfsense box (after getting the NAT working), I need to preform my procedure as mentioned in my last post..

The speedtouch should still have an IP.

This will probably help you access it:
http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,5727.msg34562.html#msg34562

If you want to, you can change the BIOS to match by pressing 's' during the memory test.

Still broke in 1.2.2, for me anyway!

With my cable provider it can take several hours to update changes and the connection becomes active again, just leave it connected and switched on overnight.
If its the mac address causing the problem you can enter the old mac on the WAN interface of pfsense box.