ok found a fix.
for some unknown reason pfsense was trying to boot from a non existant partition, the installer somehow got the wrong name.
I forced it to the correct by:
Trying to mount root from ufs:/dev/ad2s1a
Manual root filesystem specification:
<fstype>:<device>Mount <device>using filesystem <fstype>eg. ufs:da0s1a
? List valid disk boot devices
<empty line="">Abort manual input
mountroot> ?
List of GEOM managed disk devices:
ufsid/4e7a0c1bbf9d728f ad0s1c ad0s1b ad0s1a ad0s1 ad0
Manual root filesystem specification:
<fstype>:<device>Mount <device>using filesystem <fstype>eg. ufs:da0s1a
? List valid disk boot devices
<empty line="">Abort manual input
mountroot> ufs:/dev/ad0s1a
Trying to mount root from ufs:/dev/ad0s1a
___
/ f
/ p _/ Sense
_/
__/
Welcome to pfSense 1.2.3-RELEASE…
Mounting filesystems... done.
Creating symlinks......done.
Launching the init system... done.
Initializing.................. done.
Starting device manager (devd)...done.
Loading configuration......done.
Network interface mismatch -- Running interface assignment option.
Valid interfaces are:
fxp0 ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
fxp1 ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
fxp2 ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
Do you want to set up VLANs first?
If you are not going to use VLANs,
So if anyone else has this error its nothing you are doing it is a pfsense bug!
All thats left is to correct fstab and its ok.</empty></fstype></device></device></fstype></empty></fstype></device></device></fstype>