[SOLVED] Installation hangs at md0.uzip

lexemmens

Fellow pfSense-users,

I know this had been treated before, but somehow, pfSense still refuses to install at my PC.
Before I explain my problem in detail, let's go through the specs of it:

MSI K9AGM Motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 6000+ (3.0 GHZ)
3 GB of memory
1 TB SATA Samsung Hard Drive (I know that this is overkill, but anyway…)
2 Realtek NICs (1 10Mbit - a very old one indeed, > 10 years old - and 1 100 Mbit card)

The situation:
For a foundation we have an internet opportunity for our visitors. Because of the low internet speed we have and in order to prevent abuse of our internet connection we'd like to set up a gateway/firewall and we have chosen for pfSense.
But the installation of pfSense is not going as smoothly as I hoped for.

The problem:
If I power on the computer, pfSense boots up from the CD. No problem so far. It even shows pfSense menu (y'know, where I can choose for default, without ACPI, safe mode etc.).

Whenever I wait until the timer reaches 0, it continues. Still looking good so far.
At a certain point it even prints on my display:

Configuring crash dumps...
Mounting filesystems...
md0.uzip: 2498 x 65536 blocks

And that's where it all goes wrong. It hangs.

What I already tried / made sure:
I do have the latest BIOS version installed. According to MSI that's version 3.5.
After a bit of Googling I found someone stating that I should use another CD/DVD drive. I did. Without any result.
I also tried to changing the 'OnChip SATA Type' from Native IDE to AHCI, but that doesn't matter.
I tried booting pfSense into safe mode. That gave me the following error:

i386: Fatal trap 9: general protection fault while in kernel mode
amd64: Fatal trap 12: page fault while in kernel mode

The amd64 version also shows 'acd0: FAILURE - READ_BIG ILLEGAL REQUEST asc=0x64 ascq=0x00'

And last but not least I tried both i386 as well as the amd64 version (the 'pfSense-2.0.1-RELEASE-[i386_OR_AMD64].iso.gz' versions). Both show exactly the same symptoms.
I also tried using these discs on my netbook with an Intel Atom processor and that worked well (thus the discs are ok).

My question is as follows:
Anyone still have ideas on what this could be? And how I can install pfSense properly? Could it be a hardware error? (Why is Windows installing properly than?). Do I have an incompatible hard drive may be? Maybe something went wrong while burning?

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

jporter

These types of errors are generally related to bad hardware. You might try running Memtest86 on that system to see if you can detect memory faults.
Additionally you said 3G of memory, is that 4 DIMMS? (Two 1G, plus 2x512M). If so are they the same speed. I've seen issues with mismatched memory causing problems, even though the memory individually is good. Additionally those older Realtek cards are not recommended for performance and robustness. Its possible the card could be causing traps, although the Memory/CPU/motherboard are more likely.

Jeremy

wallabybob

@lexemmens:

And that's where it all goes wrong. It hangs.

It is quite a while since I did a pfSense install but my recollection is that there can be times when the installation is quiet for what seems a long time, even tens of minutes.

When it appears to hang, do you get an response to control-T typed on the console keyboard? (You should get a short status report of what is happening.) If not, do the appropriate keyboard indicators change state if you tap the Num Lock or Caps Lock keys?

@lexemmens:

I also tried to changing the 'OnChip SATA Type' from Native IDE to AHCI, but that doesn't matter.

I suspect you would be better served by "Native IDE" than "AHCI".

@lexemmens:

And last but not least I tried both i386 as well as the amd64 version (the 'pfSense-2.0.1-RELEASE-[i386_OR_AMD64].iso.gz' versions). Both show exactly the same symptoms.

I suggest you stick with the i386 version. You don't have enough RAM to warrant use of the amd64 version. (And you have more than enough RAM for "basic" firewall use.)

If your install is genuinely hanging rather than being quiet for longer than you expected, I would remove (or disable if it is onboard) the 10MBit NIC. Some of its support components may have reached the end of their useful life.

lexemmens

First of all, thanks for your feedback.

@wallabybob:

@lexemmens:

And that's where it all goes wrong. It hangs.

It is quite a while since I did a pfSense install but my recollection is that there can be times when the installation is quiet for what seems a long time, even tens of minutes.

When it appears to hang, do you get an response to control-T typed on the console keyboard? (You should get a short status report of what is happening.) If not, do the appropriate keyboard indicators change state if you tap the Num Lock or Caps Lock keys?

I tried that and got the following result:

load: 2.41 cmd: sleep 33 [nanslp] 0.00r 0.00u 0.00s 0% 376k

After a while, the same keystroke gives me:

load: 0.00 cmd: sleep 33 [nanslp] 0.00r 0.00u 0.00s 0% 376k

However I'm not an expert in FreeBSD this tells me that nothing is happening and a little bit of Googling told me that nanosleep shows up when it's waiting for something.

Removing the 10MB NIC showed no result. However I saw a message stating:

Root mount waiting for: usbus5

That's strange because I only have 4 USB ports (keyboard and mouse in usbus0 and usbus1). That could be why the installer is in nanslp.
Furthermore my harddrive led is constantly burning….

Edit: Choosing option 3 (boot from USB) resolves that error, but still goes to [nanslp]

wallabybob

@lexemmens:

First of all, thanks for your feedback.

You're welcome.

@lexemmens:

I tried that and got the following result:

load: 2.41 cmd: sleep 33 [nanslp] 0.00r 0.00u 0.00s 0% 376k

After a while, the same keystroke gives me:

load: 0.00 cmd: sleep 33 [nanslp] 0.00r 0.00u 0.00s 0% 376k

However I'm not an expert in FreeBSD this tells me that nothing is happening and a little bit of Googling told me that nanosleep shows up when it's waiting for something.

1. Your system isn't hung - frozen.
2. sleep 33 is a command to sleep 33 seconds - perhaps to allow time before checking if something run in the background has completed.

@lexemmens:

Removing the 10MB NIC showed no result.

I presume you meant "no change in behaviour", otherwise I'm not sure what "no result" means.

I suggest you try again and when it appears to hang leave it for up to 30 minutes. If the console shows exactly the same output then we need to look further.

If I recall correctly,some months ago I replied to a similar post about install appearing to hang. It turned out the original poster just need to wait longer. If you search the forums you might find it and then have some some experiences to compare with your own.

What is the file you are trying to install from? I presume you have unzipped the file, burnt the resultant CD image to a CD, successfully booted from the CD and the invoked option 99 to install to hard drive.

lexemmens

@wallabybob:

@lexemmens:

Removing the 10MB NIC showed no result.

I presume you meant "no change in behaviour", otherwise I'm not sure what "no result" means.

I suggest you try again and when it appears to hang leave it for up to 30 minutes. If the console shows exactly the same output then we need to look further.

If I recall correctly,some months ago I replied to a similar post about install appearing to hang. It turned out the original poster just need to wait longer. If you search the forums you might find it and then have some some experiences to compare with your own.

What is the file you are trying to install from? I presume you have unzipped the file, burnt the resultant CD image to a CD, successfully booted from the CD and the invoked option 99 to install to hard drive.

I indeed meant no change in behaviour. What I tried today: boot from CD and leave the PC on for about 45 minutes. Got the same result when I hit CTRL-T.

Also ran Memtest86: no errors. And I ran GParted from the Ultimate Boot CD. That showed me that my hard drive was messed up (no partition table). So I created a partition table and rebooted of the pfSense LiveCD. Still no result.

@Your last sentence: I downloaded the corresponding .iso.gz and extracted the ISO. Burned it to a CD and boot my PC from CD. I can't enter option 99, because that's an option in the shell menu that only shows when pfSense is started.

Update:
I also tried downloading version 1.2.3. Burned it to a CD and voila. It works like a charm. Updating from the browser from version 1.2.3 to 2.0 or to 2.0.1 succeeds, but after a reboot it stops at:

Starting device manager (devd)…

CTRL+T gives me the following result:

load: 0.05 cmd: php 265 [nanslp] 0.00r 0.09u 0.02s 0% 24084k

EDIT 2
Thread marked as solved. Instelled version 1.2.3. Turned off APCI in BIOS and turned off OS/2 in BIOS. Then upgraded to 2.0. After that upgraded to 2.0.1. Thanks for your help.