DEC740 Desktop Security Appliance - Cannot proceed with installation of PfSense

[michmoor]

@FermoriteSupport Totally guessing but i think it runs coreboot. Perhaps there is firmware protection going on?

[stephenw10]

Try using 2.7-dev. I believe that hardware may have had something that's only supported from FreeBSD 13.

See: https://forum.netgate.com/topic/175665/kernel-panic-when-loading-axgbe-after-upgrade-to-freebsd-14-based-2-7-0

Steve

[FermoriteSupport]

@michmoor said in DEC740 Desktop Security Appliance - Cannot proceed with installation of PfSense:

@FermoriteSupport Totally guessing but i think it runs coreboot. Perhaps there is firmware protection going on?

Do you know or believe that I can skip it somehow?

@stephenw10 said in DEC740 Desktop Security Appliance - Cannot proceed with installation of PfSense:

Try using 2.7-dev. I believe that hardware may have had something that's only supported from FreeBSD 13.

See: https://forum.netgate.com/topic/175665/kernel-panic-when-loading-axgbe-after-upgrade-to-freebsd-14-based-2-7-0

Steve

I tried it a few minutes ago but unfortunately, after booting from USB it shows me the below screen, and then the appliance reboots by itself...

[stephenw10]

Hmm, odd that in the other thread there is no mention of having to use special boot parameters etc.

That is failing as soon as it loads the kernel. What baud rate are you using there? If the BIOS is using something other than 115200 you won't see any output from the kernel which does use that.

[FermoriteSupport]

@stephenw10 said in DEC740 Desktop Security Appliance - Cannot proceed with installation of PfSense:

Hmm, odd that in the other thread there is no mention of having to use special boot parameters etc.

That is failing as soon as it loads the kernel. What baud rate are you using there? If the BIOS is using something other than 115200 you won't see any output from the kernel which does use that.

[stephenw10]

The error there shows it's using the EFI console (from Insyde not Coreboot) and that it expects some parameters that are not configured. I have no idea what those would be though. You might be able to see them in opnsense. Or ping the user in the other thread and see what they used.

[TeKa]

Hi all, (especially @FermoriteSupport),

I have more or less the same question/situation. I want to use PfSense, but I like the technical specs of the DEC740. Did you succeed on the installation of PfSense on the DEC740, and were you able to use the 10gbit sfp+ ports?

Right now i'm running PfSense+ 23.5 on an APU2 board, but I 'miss' the SFP+ port to get better support for my incoming optical fiber ;)

Kind regards.

[patient0]

Good Morning,

I know this is a old thread, but I was in a similar boat and with the help of the other *sense forum I got it working:

There's a open PR/Diff for FreeBSD regarding "stand: add EFI support for mmio serial consoles". It links to a blog post from 2018 How to get a memory mapped serial console.

TL;DR: at the boot loader OK prompt: set hw.uart.console="mm:0xfedc9000,rs:2"

That did it for me. I started with FreeBSD 14.1 where it didn't work either and made me way to pfSense 2.7.2 CE.

Now the issue is that applying it to /boot/loader.conf.local doesn't work in pfSense but it does in FreeBSD 14.1. For that I'll create a new thread.
That was answered in post in where to put hw.uart.console setting so it sticks after reboot

Adding the following to /boot/loader.conf.local:

console="efi"
hw.uart.console="mm:0xfedc9000,rs:2"

worked for me.

[logan5247]

@patient0 said in DEC740 Desktop Security Appliance - Cannot proceed with installation of PfSense:

Good Morning,

I know this is a old thread, but I was in a similar boat and with the help of the other *sense forum I got it working:

There's a open PR/Diff for FreeBSD regarding "stand: add EFI support for mmio serial consoles". It links to a blog post from 2018 How to get a memory mapped serial console.

TL;DR: at the boot loader OK prompt: set hw.uart.console="mm:0xfedc9000,rs:2"

That did it for me. I started with FreeBSD 14.1 where it didn't work either and made me way to pfSense 2.7.2 CE.

Now the issue is that applying it to /boot/loader.conf.local doesn't work in pfSense but it does in FreeBSD 14.1. For that I'll create a new thread.
That was answered in post in where to put hw.uart.console setting so it sticks after reboot

Adding the following to /boot/loader.conf.local:

console="efi"
hw.uart.console="mm:0xfedc9000,rs:2"

worked for me.

Hey, how is the DEC740 working out for you? Wanted to get an opinion before I drop $800+ on this thing

[patient0]

@logan5247 said in DEC740 Desktop Security Appliance - Cannot proceed with installation of PfSense:

Hey, how is the DEC740 working out for you? Wanted to get an opinion before I drop $800+ on this thing

I'm pretty happy with it, I did have to upgrade to pfSense Plus. Have to try to remember why :/ ... I think for the support of the 10G ports.

Performance wise I get about 5-6Gbit iperf3 out of it on my Fiber (not PPPoE), no IDS running.
I would compare it to a Netgate 6100 MAX (don't go for the eMMC based models) which may give equal or better performance.

[logan5247]

@patient0 said in DEC740 Desktop Security Appliance - Cannot proceed with installation of PfSense:

@logan5247 said in DEC740 Desktop Security Appliance - Cannot proceed with installation of PfSense:

Hey, how is the DEC740 working out for you? Wanted to get an opinion before I drop $800+ on this thing

I'm pretty happy with it, I did have to upgrade to pfSense Plus. Have to try to remember why :/ ... I think for the support of the 10G ports.

Performance wise I get about 5-6Gbit iperf3 out of it on my Fiber (not PPPoE), no IDS running.
I would compare it to a Netgate 6100 MAX (don't go for the eMMC based models) which may give equal or better performance.

Thanks for sharing!