USB 2.0 Flash Drive

neemers · Sep 19, 2006, 5:40 PM

Hello all!!

I'm trying to install PFSense on my USB Flash drive and am having problems.

So I setup everything and then when I get to the menu I select 99 to install on a flash drive. I got through all the steps of partitioning the USB drive and it starts the copy progress I guess it is and it sits at 41% for about 10-20 minutes. I will finally finish and reboot. When it goes to boot from the USB flash drive it says like not /Boot/Loader and other errors.

It is a 1GB flash drive….

what am I doing wrong?

Should I "Install Bootblock?" and "Packet Mode" ?

Thank you for any info!!

neemers · Sep 19, 2006, 7:51 PM

I just installed M0n0wall on the USB drive and it worked fine. Is there any other way to get the image on the USB drive without booting to the CD? Like M0n0wall?

Help please…..

sullrich · Sep 19, 2006, 8:01 PM

Use the embedded image and DD it or use physdiskwrite.exe to write the image to the USB drive the same as you did with m0n0wall.

neemers · Sep 19, 2006, 9:41 PM

@sullrich:

Use the embedded image and DD it or use physdiskwrite.exe to write the image to the USB drive the same as you did with m0n0wall.

:'(

So close but same error. I get..

error 1 lba 60064
No /boot/loader

FreeBSD/i386 boot
Default: 0:fd(0,a)/boot/kernel/kernel
boot:
error 1 lba 60064
No /boot/kernel/kernel

yada yada

Then sits with a blinking curser…..

An ideas?

sullrich · Sep 19, 2006, 9:47 PM

What are you plugging this drive into?

Have you tried CHS mode if the unit supports?

neemers · Sep 19, 2006, 10:15 PM

@sullrich:

What are you plugging this drive into?

Have you tried CHS mode if the unit supports?

It is a 1GB Kingston USB2.0 flash drive. I'm plugging it into the USB on this computer. I also plugged it in to the USB of another computer as well and I get the same error on boot.

I don't know what CHS mode is.

But the settings I have in the BIOS are working fine for booting to M0n0wall…...

sullrich · Sep 19, 2006, 10:27 PM

Maybe something here can help you:

http://wiki.pfsense.com/wikka.php?wakka=BootTroubleShooting

neemers · Sep 19, 2006, 10:32 PM

@sullrich:

Maybe something here can help you:

http://wiki.pfsense.com/wikka.php?wakka=BootTroubleShooting

I'm using a USB Thumb drive / flash drive…........ not a usb hard drive......

I'm guessing there is no fix for this? Maybe better thumbdrive support in the next update?

sullrich · Sep 19, 2006, 10:44 PM

USB thumbdrive support works just fine. I would suggest reading that wiki page.

hoba · Sep 20, 2006, 5:28 AM

@neemers:

@sullrich:

Use the embedded image and DD it or use physdiskwrite.exe to write the image to the USB drive the same as you did with m0n0wall.

:'(

So close but same error. I get..

error 1 lba 60064
No /boot/loader

FreeBSD/i386 boot
Default: 0:fd(0,a)/boot/kernel/kernel
boot:
error 1 lba 60064
No /boot/kernel/kernel

yada yada

Then sits with a blinking curser…..

An ideas?

Embeddeds have their output at the com1 interface. Use a crossovercable and a terminalprogram to connect to it from another PC. I guess it actually is booting but you just don't get the output after it switched to serial.

neemers · Oct 3, 2006, 6:45 PM

Well I went to a different motherboard that boots from the thumbdrive just fine. I got PFsense up amd running now. I ran into 2 errors when it was setting up the USB thumbdrive though. I just told it to skip and it continued on just fine. The router is not in production yet. But I have a question, there is no swap file showing on the main page of PFsense. There is the Disk usage but no swap file usage. Is this bad? I went with all the defaults when setting up the thumbdrive install and I remember seeing it setup a partition called swap. I think one of the errors I got said something about swap file not found. If things will run fine without a swap then I will leave it, but if you think I need it, then i can reinstall PFSense and get you those errors I'm getting.

Thank you for your help!

Oh and I installed with RC3 as well this time!

neemers · Oct 4, 2006, 9:04 PM

Well I fiddled with it and it looks like I need a bigger USB thumbdirve. I bought a 1GB thumbdrive and thats not big enough!!??? Man that sucks. In the setup it is wanting to make the swap file its self 1GB! I tried setting it lower but it warns me that I will not have enough space for a memory dump. But I only have 512MB of memory installed on the system .

So can I just force the swap file to be 512MB, the size of the memory on the system?

hoba · Oct 4, 2006, 9:10 PM

Swap partition is optional. You can run without it. Just remove it completely.

neemers · Oct 4, 2006, 9:16 PM

@hoba:

Swap partition is optional. You can run without it. Just remove it completely.

Sweet. Thank you for the response hoba, you kick ass!