Hardware purchase advice please

pvoigt

With the Sata to CF converter. Should I select IDE or SATA mode in BIOS?
Assuming the bios on this motherboard will offer that choice?

Tested so far following CF converters:
http://www.delock.de/produkte/F_283_2-5_91697/merkmale.html?setLanguage=en
http://www.delock.de/produkte/F_283_2-5_91661/merkmale.html?setLanguage=en

Using BIOS IDE mode.

Peter

pvoigt

@hackin8:

pvoigt - would this be any better for you?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HIPRO-100W-ATX-PSU-Power-Supply-Unit-HP-A1463F5-/230822905477

You may be right because its power data seems more appropriate. One the other hand I am using a 80+ PSU (Enermax). Only if I can directly compare both PSU I will become more wise :)

I suppose most effective would be using a picoPSU. I once decided to go with the ATX PSU because I wanted to use a standard miniITX case which could be re-used by another machine in the future.

Peter

jimmybob

The CF card I have is a 16GB… do I just use the 4GB image with that?
pfSense-2.0.3-RELEASE-4g-i386-nanobsd_vga-20130412-1022.img.gz
Is this the correct image?

This will be going on an Atom 1.8 with VGA output only.

pvoigt

@jimmybob:

The CF card I have is a 16GB… do I just use the 4GB image with that?
pfSense-2.0.3-RELEASE-4g-i386-nanobsd_vga-20130412-1022.img.gz
Is this the correct image?

This will be going on an Atom 1.8 with VGA output only.

This will work without problems. With this image you will have a VGA console. Mostly, a 4 GB CF will be sufficient for the 4 GB image. However, some CF seem to not provide full capacity so e.g a 4 GB image cannot be successfully written to a 4 GB CF. I've read somewhere in the pfSense forum about it but cannot remember the threads - sorry.

I am mostly using 4 GB CF and write a 2 GB image to it - just to be one the safe side :).

Peter

jimmybob

pfSense-2.0.3-RELEASE-4g-i386-nanobsd_vga-20130412-1022.img.gz

With the above image I read about serial port and that I won't see a console?

Will I deffo get a cmd promp with the above image?
And will the CF boot up once I install the image to it using Manuel Kasper's phydiskwrite ?

thanks

pvoigt

@jimmybob:

pfSense-2.0.3-RELEASE-4g-i386-nanobsd_vga-20130412-1022.img.gz

With the above image I read about serial port and that I won't see a console?

Will I deffo get a cmd promp with the above image?
And will the CF boot up once I install the image to it using Manuel Kasper's phydiskwrite ?

thanks

Well, the above image will provide a vga console. If you want a serial console only, you should use
pfSense-2.0.3-RELEASE-4g-i386-nanobsd-20130412-1022.img.gz - without "vga" in its name. A "cmd prompt" will be provided by both images.

I had issues using physdiskwrite and was more successful with "win32diskimager". I used version 0.6 a while ago. Latest version is 0.7:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/. Alternatively, you can use "dd" under Linux (or Unix).

EDIT: We are slowly driving off-topic. If you are still having general installation questions I propose to open a new thread in the corresponding pfSense forum :).

jimmybob

So if I have a CMD prompt which I've seen where you pick WAN, LAN etc.

What is the difference between VGA and non-VGA versions specifically?
I thought CMD prompt was what VGA was?

stephenw10

A command prompt is simply a text prompt where you can enter a command. It appears on the console. The console can be accessed either by keyboard and monitor (VGA) or via a serial connection.

If you want to use a keyboard and monitor directly on the pfSense box use a nanobsd_vga image.

@http://www.pfsense.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=43&Itemid=44:

Embedded (NanoBSD)

The embedded version is specifically tailored for use with any hardware using Compact Flash rather than a hard drive. CF cards can only handle a limited number of writes, so the embedded version runs read only from CF, with read/write file systems as RAM disks. The NanoBSD platform has two OS slices and a config slice. One OS slice is used to boot from, the other is used for upgrades, and the config slice is where the configuration is held separately.

There are two variations of the NanoBSD platform: The default version which uses a serial console, and another that supports using a VGA console. Each of those variations also comes sized for different sizes of CF cards.

The filename for NanoBSD downloads is laid out as follows: pfSense-2.0.3-RELEASE-size-arch-nanobsd.img.gz. In that filename, size can be one of 512mb, 1g, 2g, or 4g. The arch, as above is for i386 or amd64. The nanobsd part can is either nanobsd for serial console, or nanobsd_vga for the VGA-enabled version.

Steve

pvoigt

@jimmybob:

So if I have a CMD prompt which I've seen where you pick WAN, LAN etc.

What is the difference between VGA and non-VGA versions specifically?
I thought CMD prompt was what VGA was?

The VGA images are useful only for boards with a vga adapter. There are boards like most boards of the Alix series from PC Engines which do not have a VGA adapter. You cannot use them with a VGA image. You need the non-VGA images instead and you get your console via serial line.

Peter

jimmybob

ok cool. so with the jetway board I have would you say I have the correct image?

Sounds like it to me.

pvoigt

@jimmybob:

ok cool. so with the jetway board I have would you say I have the correct image?

Sounds like it to me.

Yes. I'm using a VGA image for my Jetway NF99FL-525 as well. However, I've decided to go with the corresponding AMD64 2G image:
pfSense-2.0.3-RELEASE-2g-amd64-nanobsd_vga.img.gz.

Peter

robi

Are you able to run 64-bit pfSense on Jetway NF99FL-525? On the 525 Atom CPU? I wasn't aware it's 64-bit capable.

jimmybob

@pvoigt:

@jimmybob:

ok cool. so with the jetway board I have would you say I have the correct image?

Sounds like it to me.

Yes. I'm using a VGA image for my Jetway NF99FL-525 as well. However, I've decided to go with the corresponding AMD64 2G image:
pfSense-2.0.3-RELEASE-2g-amd64-nanobsd_vga.img.gz.

Peter

Is there a reason you went 64bit and are there any advantages?

Thanks

stephenw10

I'd be interested to hear your reasoning too because my advice would be to always use the 32bit image unless you really need 64bit. You can use more than 4GB of RAM but the Atom can't so no advantage there. There may be some performance advantage for specific tasks but it's so negligible you'd need some careful testing to see it. Mostly the 32bit image is better tested, especially on an Atom.

Steve

pvoigt

@stephenw10:

I'd be interested to hear your reasoning too because my advice would be to always use the 32bit image unless you really need 64bit. You can use more than 4GB of RAM but the Atom can't so no advantage there. There may be some performance advantage for specific tasks but it's so negligible you'd need some careful testing to see it. Mostly the 32bit image is better tested, especially on an Atom.

Steve

I've once had two reasons:
1.) My system has 4 GiB RAM.
2.) I wanted to test the AMD64 version.

The AMD64 image runs very stable over months without any problems. It has turned out, however, that my pfSense installation newer uses >= 3.3 GiB. That's why I could have gone with the 32 bit image without any disadvantages :).

Peter

EDIT: Do you think there are significantly more i386 installations than AMD64? If so, I agree with you that the feedback from those users may make pfSense i386 more stable. Furthermore, many older Atoms were 32bit systems. Do you know about other reasons why the i386 image may be more stable?

stephenw10

The last time the question was asked I believe the figures showed more 32bit installs by some way. I imagine that more and more people are using 64bit though. I can't find it now. :-
Of course the more people who use 64bit the quicker an bugs will be found and squashed. ;)

I don't know what the figures are for FreeBSD, would be interesting to find out.

Steve

jimp

At least for a few years, there will probably be more i386 installs. I'm not sure if we have a way to track that accurately though.

The reason i386 is still more common is because of embedded devices, i.e. ALIX and its cousins, and re-purposed old machines that aren't 64-bit.

As the hardware in that area catches up and becomes 64-bit capable, only then would I expect it to be more common.

That said, it is definitely picking up from what I've seen with customers. New server-grade hardware and VMs are almost always using amd64 now.

jimmybob

Got it all up and running…

Well almost...

I've got WAN and LAN working.

But when I set up opt1, opt2, opt3.
They don't seem to do anything.
I can't pull up the web panel.

Do I need to set a firewall rule?

I did the set up via the CMD setup

stephenw10

@jimmybob:

Do I need to set a firewall rule?

Yes.
By default only the LAN interface has rules in place to allow access to anything. You will have to add appropriate rules to the additional interfaces.

Steve

asterix

Another reason for i386 images are that not all motherboards are capable of housing over 4GB of RAM. Typical installs of 4GB is way more that sufficient for pfSense and some resource hungry packages.

When I first started using pfSense, Snort was the killer and would hog up almost 80% of the 4GB RAM. The package now has gone through several cycles of fine tuning and refinements. It barely takes 20% of my 4GB RAM. With Snort, Squid, Dans, pfBlocker and OpenVPN all combined my RAM usage hovers around 35% and steadily increases by 2% everyday. pfSense reloads the cache after some days and memory usage drops down. So not even 2GB of RAM is being used.

Hats off to the developers who have made such a fine UTM product.