Unable to boot pfSense from USB on MacBook Pro
-
So the 2.3.2 NanoBSD for Mac is known not to work? I was hoping to avoid wiping the HD as I wanted to try it first (i.e. Live CD) using a USB thumb drive, rather than a full install.
Essentially I'm looking for a NanoBSD I can run from thumb drive, or optionally CF.
-
Yeah, you'd probably had much better luck with CF.
-
No luck with CF either. I'm just going to take the plung and wipe the drive and install. I was hoping to evaluate the speed with QOS enabled. This is a late 2014 Mac mini with a dual core i5@2.6Ghz and 8gB ram.
Hopefully the full installer will boot. The Nano doesn't appear to be bootable.
-
I have no idea about Mac. If it requires booting from EFI, nothing but 2.4 snapshots will work.
-
Ah, I didn't know these earlier images didn't support EFI. I'll download the 2.4 memstick and see how it goes.
Thanks!
-
FYI. The 2.4.0 beta worked. The CF wouldn't boot oddly enough but the USB did without iissue.
I have to ask. Why would they even have a Mac release if it doesn't support EFI in those images? The ISO for CD would work fine though. It just seems odd to even make an option that doesn't support EFI.
In any case, color me happy. It was easy to setup and detects the second thunderbolt to Ethernet without issue.
-
I have to ask. Why would they even have a Mac release if it doesn't support EFI in those images? The ISO for CD would work fine though. It just seems odd to even make an option that doesn't support EFI.
Hmm? There's no specific "Mac release" anywhere.
-
Inartfully worded. I mean a release that fits a Mac per the specs but isn't compatible. Most modern OS's support EFI. It seems odd that MBR is supported but EFI is not. Very happy that the beta supports it.
Technically I could use the ISO for a CD image although I haven't burned an actual CD in years :)
-
Inartfully worded. I mean a release that fits a Mac per the specs but isn't compatible.
We can't control what hardware people try to install pfSense on. There are lots of things out there that might read as though they would work but may not due to any number of differences. As far as I'm aware we've never claimed it could or would work on Mac hardware.
The installer was long overdue for an overhaul, 2.4 is definitely the right thing to test out on there.
-
Understood. Just a bad assumption on my part that it would support EFI. That said, the install went without a hitch and I've been tweaking on it for a week now. The beta build is pretty solid as far as I can see. Some problems with shaping but I'm sure that's more due to my inexperience with pfsense than with the build itself.
So far it's performing well beyond my expectations.
-
Bootcamp used to support BIOS/MBR only operating systems but as far as I know Apple took that away because of the messy hybrid MBR/GPT partition table system and they now require that the OS installed with bootcamp supports GPT/EFI installations.
