Kernel Panic when Upgrading to 2.8.0 beta

Gertjan

Ah, ok, right. Of course.
But : what if his 2.8.0 doesn't boot /didn't boot (because of the kernel boot failure ) ?

stephenw10

Then you need to manually set that disabled at the loader prompt one time to boot into 2.8 first. Then run that command to allow it to boot normally after that.

thrx1

@dominik-b said in Kernel Panic when Upgrading to 2.8.0 beta:

@thrx1

I just want to verify your steps because I'm facing the same Wi-Fi problem.

First time I rebooted I didn't press the '3' key quickly enough to 'Escape to loader prompt' and so I got the damn error.
I rebooted (power cycle the NUC pfSense runs on - probably a better way than that) and then pressed '3', entered the loader and typed in

set hint.iwm.0.disabled="1"

followed by:

boot

and it completed the update and pfSense worked ok - until I rebooted. I then followed the same steps above to get it to boot and once it was running again, I opened the Web GUI and navigated to
Diagnostics > Edit File
entered the following path

/boot/loader.conf.local

and the requisite data

hint.iwm.0.disabled="1"

before hitting 'save'.

pfSense has booted fine since then for me.

It sounds like some people may have an existing file `"/boot/loader.conf.local" but that was not the caese for my install (or at least that's what it looked like when I loaded the file). YMMV.

thrx1

@stephenw10 said in Kernel Panic when Upgrading to 2.8.0 beta:

Hmm, interesting if it's really disabled in the BIOS pfSense shouldn't see it at all. Something not working right there.

Reply

Correct. Under the list of devices in the BIOS on the NUC, WiFi is not checked.

tomasz.kozlowski

Do you have any info if this has been fixed in 2.8.1?

stewartv8

@tomasz.kozlowski just updated to ver 2.8.1 with no problems.

stephenw10

The driver firmware loading issue is not fixed in 2.8.1. It's still broken upstream AFAIK. You will still need to apply one of the workarounds.

darkeyesz

@stephenw10 Hello. Updating 2.8.1 same problem. I tryed the workaround, but if I create the file /boot/loader.conf.local and put the string at reboot same problem. For me only works if I set it manually.

stephenw10

What exactly are you seeing? And what exactly are you adding?

If it works manually at the loader prompt it will be possible to add it to the loader file.

darkeyesz

@stephenw10 It wont work if later I add it into the loader file. I create /boot/loader.conf.local and added hint.iwm.0.disabled="1" but if I reboot same problem it stops and I have to boot manually.

stephenw10

Hmm, well that should do exactly the same thing. Can we see some screenshots or console output?

darkeyesz

@stephenw10 Screenshot 2025-12-02 171013.png

But If I reboot

If I set it manually it boot

stephenw10

Your loader file has quotation marks (") preceding the 1 but double ticks after it ('') . They should both be quotation marks.

darkeyesz

@stephenw10 that was my mistake!!! Thank you!

KOM

@darkeyesz I'm curious about how that would even happen in the first place. Like you typed the start ", then 1, then decided to spice things up by doing the end " differently? You forgot what character you typed literally 2 characters earlier? How??

stephenw10

I'd guess it was copy/paste the line but accidentally miss the last character. Then add it as ticks by mistake. It's easy to overlook.

KOM

I suppose. My next guess was going to be 'cat on the keyboard'