Replacing hard drive with CF card

heiko

Also you can setup pfsense with "Disk-on-module". Not very fast, but stable, and writecycles are not a problem.
Greetings
heiko

nima.m

cheeky,

Is there a way to make my hd installs load as read
only after configuring everything so as to avoid the corruption?

I think so, I have test what you ask with 1.0.1-SNAPSHOT-03-08-2007
in a couple of days without any problem.

Maybe Hoba can also confirm this, he is the expert here.

this is what I did :
SSH to your router and choose option 8 and write following command :
echo embedded > /etc/platform
/etc/rc.conf_mount_ro
exit

now, choose option 5 for rebooting your router.
after this your router will act exactly like a embeded version.

cheeky

Any procedure on how to do that disk-on-module? Or the command suggested by nima.m is enough already to make my pfsense corruption-free?
Thanks again.

heiko

The Disk-on-module is to place directly to the IDE-Port. Then you run the installation from the LiveCD. That´s it. A DOM with 4 GB costs for example 60 €/ 80 $.

dom.jpg_thumb

j0emv

You can also try a CF microdrive which has physical moving parts and a platter so they should last longer than your traditional CF card. A 4gb microdrive runs about $50 probably and fits in the same CF type II slot. Of course older CF readers have issues reading these drives from my experience but if its something recent, you should be fine.

joebarnhart

You might mention that the Seagate 4G and 8G microdrives (the ones which cost $50 or less) DON'T WORK in CF-to-IDE adapters under FreeBSD 6.x. Not sure how this slipped your mind since you are the one who discovered it and submitted the bug report to FreeBSD! (Thank you for doing that, by the way.)

gnarfer

How do you install? I Followed the fullinstall on wrap guide using wmware but all I get is

ad0: TIMEOUT - READ_DMA retrying (1 retry left) LBA=0
ad0: TIMEOUT - READ_DMA retrying (0 retries left) LBA=0
ad0: FAILURE - READ_DMA timed out LBA=0
ad0: TIMEOUT - READ_DMA retrying (1 retry left) LBA=1
ad0: TIMEOUT - READ_DMA retrying (0 retries left) LBA=1
ad0: FAILURE - READ_DMA timed out LBA=1
ad0: TIMEOUT - READ_DMA retrying (1 retry left) LBA=0
ad0: TIMEOUT - READ_DMA retrying (0 retries left) LBA=0
ad0: FAILURE - READ_DMA timed out LBA=0
ad0: TIMEOUT - READ_DMA retrying (1 retry left) LBA=0
ad0: TIMEOUT - READ_DMA retrying (0 retries left) LBA=0
ad0: FAILURE - READ_DMA timed out LBA=0
Trying to mount root from ufs:/dev/da0s1a

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></empty></fstype></device></device></fstype>

I'm not realy sure what I did wrong. The hardware I use is a routerboard 200 from www.routerboard.com

hoba

Did you try the default embedded image first? I have heard about people using that board so it should not have any issues. If you want to have a full hdd install on there (which is not recommended) try to just install the livecd to the cf without other modifications. The WRAP has to be treated a bit special as it's bios doesn't offer a fake vga/kbd device. A soekris for example can just run a default full install to cf-card. You might want to try this with the routerboard as well.

gnarfer

Thanx for the tip. A Embeded img works. I'll try a clean install tonight. I have a industry class 4gb CF and it is my home fw so I'm not that worried about wearing it down.

hoba

Enable serial console option at system>advanced before moving it to the routerboard as you most likely will have to reassign nics after moving it over ;)

gnarfer

Took me a good while but now I have tried to make a clean full install from 1.2-beta1.iso I used vmware to do this but when i put my cf back on the routerboard I still get the same error.

gnarfer

I googled the error and found that it might have to do with dma settings so I looked at the wiki http://wiki.pfsense.com/wikka.php?wakka=BootOptions at boot options but even with CF card set to PIO4 i still get the question about "manual root file system specification" I have also tried to move the /boot/loader.conf file from the Embedded install (that actually boots) but I get the same result. Any ideas?

gnarfer

It's working fine now :) I had to rename partitions in /etc/fstab to point to /dev/ad0 and enable the console in advanced settings.

As the stupid newbe I'm I installed the swap partition. Do I have to reinstall to make sure that I do not use it or could I just remove it from /etc/fstab? ???