Installation on Soekris 6501 with SSD
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There may be something wrong with the way you're writing the image. I've got a handful of 6501's in the field running from nano off a USB drive. You should get serial output at 9600 if the image is good. Try using physdiskwrite with the 2.0.1 nano image. I'm using the i386 image, but the Atom should run x64 if you wanted.
I'm on a Mac and am simply doing 'dd if=img of=/dev/disk* bs=16k' to write. I've done that before with pfsense and m0n0wall to compact flash with no issues.
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I can confirm that installing works on the Soekris 6501. Did my first one today.
You have to use the image edited by jimp to have serial output beyond a certain point:
http://files.pfsense.org/jimp/pfSense-memstick-serial-2.0.1-RELEASE-i386.img.gz
This gives you serial access all throughout the boot sequence.Write that image with physdiskwrite to a USB stick and boot.
You will see some garbled text at first, but be patient.Choose 'i' for install and then quick/easy. It will auto install to the SSD.
Remove the USB stick when rebooting, set the interfaces and you're good to go.em0 and em1 always seem to show an 'up' status, even when there isn't any cable plugged in. Strange, but the interfaces work.
Hope this helps.
Denis.
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I can confirm that installing works on the Soekris 6501. Did my first one today.
And I can confirm again that it doesn't work.
I went to the trouble of finding a 1GB USB drive AND a Windows machine and ran physdiskwrite of that image. Same issue. 5-4-3-2-1. NOTHING.
CURIOUSLY ENOUGH, I also loaded a m0n0wall 1.3x SERIAL image onto one of the USB drives, and it booted up first time. No problems. No issues of any kind.
So, please don't tell me it's the Soekris. It is something in the pfsense boot loader.
The kern.cam.boot_delay is not a valid comBIOS monitor option for the Soekris bootrom, so that's a dead end.
Frustrating.
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You will see some garbled text at first, but be patient.
This implies that the bios serial output is at a different baud rate than the pfSense output. That would also exaplain why you are only seeing the bios output.
The pfSense output is 9600, 8N1.
Steve
Edit: I see there's already been some discussion of this.
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The kern.cam.boot_delay is not a valid comBIOS monitor option for the Soekris bootrom, so that's a dead end.
kern.cam.boot_delay is a FreeBSD boot loader option.
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@ stephenw10:
That's what I thought also, so I changed the combios serial speed to 9600 8N1 (same as pfsense output).
BIOS output fine -> garbled output (only rotating dash that jumps around) -> pfsense loader screen with option selection -> output ok again.
So unless the serial speed is changing to something else than 9600 in between phases of booting, I don't know what it is. -
Hmm, the serial output from the bootloader is also at 9600.
Incorrect terminal emulation settings perhaps? :-\Steve
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I've had quite a bit of trouble too to get pfsense installed on a Soekris 6501. Tried several images and PXE boot / install and nothing seemed to be working..
Until I tried the image listed below. :)You have to use the image edited by jimp to have serial output beyond a certain point:
http://files.pfsense.org/jimp/pfSense-memstick-serial-2.0.1-RELEASE-i386.img.gz
This gives you serial access all throughout the boot sequence.Write that image with physdiskwrite to a USB stick and boot.
You will see some garbled text at first, but be patient.Choose 'i' for install and then quick/easy. It will auto install to the SSD.
Remove the USB stick when rebooting, set the interfaces and you're good to go.em0 and em1 always seem to show an 'up' status, even when there isn't any cable plugged in. Strange, but the interfaces work.
I set the serial speed to 9600 and used a Sandisk Cruzer Fit 8GB to install the image on (using a Windows machine and physdiskwrite). The boot seems a bit awkward, as the "countdown" screen is mangled.. but after that it boots just fine and I was able to install pfsense on the SSD ;D
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In fiddling with it more, the bottom line I found is that this particular Soekris 6501 did not boot the Sandisk Cruzer 4GB drive automatically. However, if I selected that disk from the boot monitor, it finally DID boot.
For the uninitiated, here are some of the pertinent steps:
2 Seconds to automatic boot. Press Ctrl-P for entering Monitor.
(HIT THE CTRL-P at this point)
comBIOS Monitor. Press ? for help.
show
ConSpeed = 9600
ConLock = Enabled
ConMute = Disabled
BIOSentry = Enabled
PCIROMS = Enabled
PXEBoot = Enabled
FLASH = Primary
BootDelay = 5
FastBoot = Disabled
BootPartition = Disabled
BootDrive = 80 81 F0 FF
ShowPCI = Enabled
Reset = Hard
CpuSpeed = DefaultNote the BootDrive items listed.
I told it to
boot FF
(I think it was) which matched the drive ID for the USB drive. You can try all of them, and if they're not valid, it won't break anything.
Once I did this, I got a decent amount of garbled output, but I had read enough other threads to know to just wait patiently. Eventually, it showed the FreeBSD boot process, and I was able to start the INSTALL on the pfsense installation. I chose the serial/no-vga kernel. The SSD -did- show up as a valid drive to install to at that point.
I hope this helps someone else avoid some pain and frustration.
Thanks to all who offered pointers.
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The 6501 is very picky about which USB sticks it will boot from. Out of the half dozen or more I tried, only one would boot.
If you copy/paste the line from the BIOS detection that shows the drive, it would help to determine if it's a problem with the stick or not.
