Just use the 4GB Image für USB sticks. If you need more storage use a ssd.

Excellent, thanks! Is it possible for a nerd/geek to be cool? Really?  :P You betcha ;)

All fixed. The problem was the laptop from which I was uploading the new firmware. Just after I posted this question - the hard drive started to make bad noises and crashed. I uploaded the new firmware from another laptop and all is fine. Cheers!

use siproxd and set outbound nat to manual

I had to reboot a couple of times during the holidays for other reasons not related to this issue but I thought I'd post to say that I've been running for 24 days straight without any IPv6 connectivity problems while staying on 2.2.4. I'm tempted to upgrade to 2.2.6 but not sure if it's worth the trouble unless there's been a bug of some sort identified.  A friend of mine setup pfsense with 2.2.6 and he's had these IPv6 connectivity problems very similar to what I've experienced.  A reboot of his fw always seems to solve the problem. I'll post again to give another update next month. LoboTiger

Is "PowerD" and/or "Cryptographic Hardware Acceleration" turned on? If yes, turn 'em off and give it a try! Do you have any other "Advanced Settings" on? Oh, and another thing to look for. What Power Supply are you using. Is it an external brick style like Laptop PSU? If yes, can you test it(not just with a volt meter) OR replace it temporarily. They do go bad some times!

thank you heper for that fast reply :) I tried that but its only for mirroring or in single disk mode zfs. Can you direct me some few instructions on how to do it? ::)

On another system I had FreeBSD 10.1 installed and this adapter wasn't recognised but after an upgrade to 10.2 it was, so FreeBSD does have support for such an adapter. The problem is that pfSense is currently based on 10.1… I guess there must be some way of adding the required drivers, but I'm not sure how...

I have success.  I used Win32Disk and made a 4 GIG image stick.  It now installs.  I am not sure why? But I am glade I made progress.

Topic should be posted under Virtualization installations and techniques

LOL, don't know why I thought his netgear was a switch  :o

I did end up doing that, but I downloaded it to my flash drive and extracted the files.  According to a video I saw about it, I made one NIC bridged for the WAN and one internal for the LAN.  it said it made my WAN DHCP, but it shows no IP address for the WAN - only one for the LAN?  I am currently staying at a hotel and have no access to their router or anything like that - not sure if that matters or not?  Plus my host computer itself is running only on wifi as the hotel has made it that way.  Please see below ss for what I am referring to.  Any help would be greatly appreciated. http://prntscr.com/9u2wfi

Broadcom NICs? Hmmm, Don't like them much. But at least Dell (depending on model) make drivers (probably not relevant) and firmware updates easy. So go check and see if there is a firmware update available for the NICs.  (BIOS too, while your there).

You also might want to check your BIOS' disk options, IDE vs AHCI, and see if that helps at all if the amd64 build doesn't fix it for you.  Wouldn't hurt to check for any BIOS updates for that hardware, and reset it back to factory defaults as well just in case something got changed over the years.

I upgraded the slave to 2.2.6, and then I realized there were two IPSec aggressive tunnels (only one of them came up).  All of the main mode tunnels came up OK. I switched back to the master running 2.1.5 and switched the 2 aggressive tunnels to use OpenVPN instead.  I then switched back to the slave and everything came up OK. However, now on the slave running 2.2.6, when I click on the 'e' to edit any Phase2 it always takes me to a blank Phase2 screen instead of the correct Phase2 screen for this tunnel. No matter what Phase2 I try to edit it aways takes me to URL:  https://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/vpn_ipsec_phase2.php?p2index= This is a blank Phase2 screen with LAN subnet, a blank remote network, AES=auto, SHA1, PFS off, 3600 settings. Even if I try to put in a correct URL: https://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/vpn_ipsec_phase2.php?p2index=2 it still takes me to the exact same blank Phase2 screen. I exported the config from the slave and imported it into two other 2.2.6 routers, and the same blank Phase2 screen problem happens on them as well.  Importing the old config from when the slave was running 2.1.5 works fine, and displays Phase2 screens OK. Did my config get poisoned somehow during this process?

@Valex: Just installiert the actual image from the USB drive, import the configuration and everything should be fine. Trim needs to be enabled in the GUI. Thank you. Where in the GUI do I enable TRIM?

Ran into the same issue on a fresh install of 2.2.6.  Appears to be a bug with the integration the of DNS Resolver Unbound - OR another DNS server on your network (was not my case).  I reinstalled 2.2.6 several times with no devices attached to the router and received the following similar message after first initial boot. Under your System Logs: General image, item 21 (5 up from the bottom), notice the following error: The command '/usr/local/sbin/unbound -c /var/unbound/unbound.conf' returned exit code '1', the output was '[1453028981] ... error: bind: address already in use [1453028981] unbound[54500:0] fatal error: could not open ports' If you want to resolve DNS you will have to Disable DNS Resolver (Unbound) and Enable DNS Forwarder (dnsmasq).  After that you should be fine.  I hope this gets resolved (no pun intended) soon.