PfSense not booting after install, waiting for F5

maxxer · Apr 17, 2012, 7:49 AM

hi. I've installed pfS 2.0.1 on an old P4 machine and all went fine, but when I boot the computer without the CD pfsense remains polling the floppy and printing dashes (#).
To make it boot I have to press F1 and then F5 (or something like that), and then starts.

I don't exactly remember how I performed the installation but I used mostly the default parameters. Did I do something wrong?
thanks

cmb · Apr 17, 2012, 9:15 AM

Sounds like that's your BIOS doing that, before it even tries to boot off the hard drive. Nothing in the initial boot process would touch the floppy so it has to be your BIOS lighting it up. Disable every boot device except the hard drive in the BIOS and see if it boots.

maxxer · Apr 17, 2012, 9:37 AM

@cmb:

Sounds like that's your BIOS doing that, before it even tries to boot off the hard drive. Nothing in the initial boot process would touch the floppy so it has to be your BIOS lighting it up. Disable every boot device except the hard drive in the BIOS and see if it boots.

indeed could be that, also because F6 option is PXE boot.
but I tried resetting to factory default and still behaves the same. :/ very strange.
I have to press F5 for Disk 0 boot, then F1 for pfSense boot, then loads pfSense boot menu.

cmb · Apr 18, 2012, 1:50 AM

F5 has no relevance in our boot loader and it won't show anything like "disk 0 boot", that's your BIOS doing that.

maxxer · Apr 18, 2012, 4:42 AM

@cmb:

F5 has no relevance in our boot loader and it won't show anything like "disk 0 boot", that's your BIOS doing that.

ok, thanks again!

jimp · Apr 24, 2012, 4:36 PM

There are some circumstances where the boot loader will report other disks found by the BIOS. For instance on this one machine I was installing a bit ago, when I had a USB dongle plugged in, F5 was the USB dongle and F1 was the HDD.

I've also seen some circumstances where, due to BIOS limitations, it wouldn't boot the HDD for whatever reason (but this was Windows), however if you booted a CD that could then pass off the boot to the HDD it worked.

Long story short, the BIOS is probably your best bet. Update it, check the boot order, and so on.

maxxer · Apr 25, 2012, 4:05 PM

sadly couldn't manage to figure out :(
I'm pretty sure it's pfsense. I tried resetting bios to factory default but I still see the menu.
I also moved the hdd from my pc to another (pretty similar) and I still get the F5 option.

the problem is that it won't boot until I press F1 and F5. can't get rid of it :(

jimp · Apr 25, 2012, 5:05 PM

When you're booted, from a shell, try this:


/sbin/sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=16
gpart set -a active -i /dev/ad0s1a ad0
/usr/sbin/boot0cfg -s ad0s1a -v /dev/ad0
/sbin/sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=0

Assuming your drive is ad0

Or you could try running "boot0cfg -B" on its own to replace the MBR.

Or failing all of that, backup your config, run a low-level format on the drive from start to end, and reinstall. That would be the last resort "dust off and nuke it from orbit" option.