Install from USB drive (working)
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Every other file distributed by pfSense is gzip compressed. It shouldn't be any harder to decompress than any other image.
@Efonne:
In many cases you can get around that by right-clicking the link and selecting "save link as" or "save target as" (whatever the browser has) instead of just opening the link normally.
Solved by doin this. :) totally missed that comment.
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hey guys i tried both dd and windiskimager, they write the image to the pendrive but at the moment to boot from it doesnt work :(…..any tips? thx
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Did you try downloading the link in a different browser? Or right clicking the link and choosing "Save Link As"?
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yes i did that way too,i tried another pen too,no luck,when dd or diskimager finish i try to access to the pendrive and i say that isnt formated,is that normal?
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That is normal. Windows won't see the partition, because Windows doesn't understand FreeBSD's file system (ufs2)
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oh yeah,my bad,but i cant boot from the pen yet :(
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It may be your BIOS. I have encountered many systems over the years that would either not boot from USB, or would only do so unreliably.
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well i tried other SO and the boot from the USB works….
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Every other file distributed by pfSense is gzip compressed. It shouldn't be any harder to decompress than any other image.
I have seen pfSense-memstick-2.0-BETA4-20101121-1828.img.gz from snapshot repo, please confirm how can be pfsense 2 installed from usb stick please.
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decompress the file, and write it to a USB stick, same as any other.
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Hi!
i've noticed that there are pfsense 2.0 img files from snapshot server, does this mean that we only have to do de "dd" step to install pfsense 2.0 in a usb stick and then run the setup from it?
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Yes, dd the decompressed image (or gzip … | dd, check the directions for embedded images on the doc wiki) and then boot from the USB stick.
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thanks jimp, sorry for the repeated post.
regards
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Got the image installed on my USB drive however the boot hangs at the following.
GEOM: da0: geometry does not match the label (16h, 63s != 255h,63s)
GEOM: da0: media size does not match the label.EDIT: Selected Option 3 to boot from usb device on startup and issue resolved.
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I've tried gzip -d then DD on the memstick 2.0.img, the 2.0 Nanobsd.img, as well as the usbinstall.img from farther up and I keep getting "no bootable partition on table." i've also tried multiple usb sticks with no luck… any suggestions?... I've never installed pfsense and trying to go with a usb drive to not have to buy a CDrom.... any help would be much appreciated.
Here is the process I went through:
**C:\MakeUSB>gzip pfSense-memstick-2.0-RC1-i386-20110226-1530.img -d
C:\MakeUSB>dd if=pfSense-memstick-2.0-RC1-i386-20110226-1530.img of=\.\d: bs=1k
rawwrite dd for windows version 0.5.
Written by John Newbigin jn@it.swin.edu.auThis program is covered by the GPL. See copying.txt for details
253512+0 records in
253512+0 records out/jn@it.swin.edu.au**-Tried it on machine and got the "no bootable partition on table"
**C:\MakeUSB>gzip pfSense-1.2.3-RELEASE-2g-nanobsd.img -d
C:\MakeUSB>gzip pfSense-2.0-RC1-512mb-i386-20110226-1633-nanobsd.img -d
C:\MakeUSB>dd if=pfSense-2.0-RC1-512mb-i386-20110226-1633-nanobsd.img of=\.\d:
bs=1k
rawwrite dd for windows version 0.5.
Written by John Newbigin jn@it.swin.edu.auThis program is covered by the GPL. See copying.txt for details
500472+0 records in
500472+0 records outC:\MakeUSB>/jn@it.swin.edu.au**
-Tried it on machine and got the "no bootable partition on table"
same for usbinstall.
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I too have had some issues getting PF 2.x working from USB - with the dreaded 'GEOM: da0: geometry does not match the label' error after DD'ing the memstick image over.
After trying many different types of USB stick / CF Card - nothing worked, even after selecting option '3' on the installer.
However in the end I got it working, but there is still a small problem hopefully someone will know the answer to….
To get this working, with the USB stick in the system, I booted using the LiveCD. Once booted, I then dropped to shell and did :
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/da0 bs=1M
After a while, the USB was zero'd out. I then exited and selected the '99' option to install from hard disk.
The install ran through, but after reboot (after removing the CD) I am again confronted by the install / setup screen. I manually select '3' and this time, PF boots up and works.
So my question is - how do I basically bypass this setup screen and get the thing to boot up without having to press '3'?
At the moment, the default option is to just boot up (default) from hard disk which ends horribly.
I was also wondering if this installation would be in any way different from the memstick / nano images, was wondering about logging / writing to flash more as this would basically be the 'hard disk' version?
JD
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Read the note here about setting the boot_delay:
http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Boot_Troubleshooting
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Brilliant - works like a charm now.
Any ideas if installing to 'disk' from LiveCD is any different from the 'memstick' build?
I'm mainly concerned about PF performing excessive writes to the Flash medium.
I thought I read something somewhere that the nano / memstick builds were optimised for flash media - with most logging functions disabled as default because of this?
JD
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The nanobsd builds keep the file system read only, and even when they do switch to rw for various things, they keep the filesystem sync and noatime to minimize writes. The logs are kept in a RAM disk, they are not disabled.
The full install will frequently write to the disk, there is no way around that on the full install. If you are installing to any flash media, you really do want the NanoBSD variety.
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Ugh - feared as much. I can't get any of the nano builds to work on this server - just get to the BTX loader version and then nothing….
The 'memstick' image does actually boot, however I get the disk geometry error - so no dice there either.
Any ideas why all nano builds refuse to boot, whereas memstick / liveCD disk installed ones do?
JD