Firebox x500 troubles in installation (NanoBSD 2.1.4)

LylythofEverblight

I've been having a great deal of trouble in installation on this particular device as every attempt to install fails because it keeps making a single beep, then restarting before anything happens. I'm literally stuck at the point of 1) pfSense 2) pfSense F6) PXE

But no matter what I do, it attempts to boot and then all progress stops because of the reset and takes me back to the 3 choices.

All attempts get me to a /boot/config -h
Then it goes into the FreeBSD bootstrap loader, BIOS drive C: is disk0. then a beep and back to the menu. Is there something I'm missing?

I've seen a few write ups on the devices in the CORE series not being able to recognize CF cards past 256MB, is it likely that this is the problem in this instance?
If so, I've seen a BIOS update that targets the x750e as X750EB2.BIN, but can't find anything pertaining to the CORE series.

I've read numerous posts but haven't found a situation where this exact problem is discussed, so I hope I'm not starting up a topic that has been beaten to death.

EDIT: I've been running a few tests and found that if I do not touch anything the bootstrap loader begins and reaches a point where it states "data= 0x91c91c", beeps once, and then returns to menu choices of 1,2, or F6.

If I press Enter to being, it goes through the same process, but instead gets " data= 0x91c91c data=0x51dad4+0x9e0c4/", beeps once, and then returns to menu choices of 1,2, or F6.

stephenw10

There is no BIOS update neccessary (or available) for the original X-Core boxes. Only the X-Core-e boxes require it (x550e, x750e, x1250e etc). There are few incorrect blog posts out on the net that imply otherwise though. ;)

Is this a clean install of 2.1.4 or an upgrade?

Steve

LylythofEverblight

It's a clean install Steve.

Not sure if it's a hardware problem at this point or not though.

stephenw10

What image exactly are you using to write the CF card?

Steve

LylythofEverblight

Sorry for the delay,
I'm attempting to write the 4GB nano img and I've used both physdiskwrite and win32diskimager.
I've also attempted to use the 2GB img, but the 4GB image leaves approximately 115MB left free on the device.

stephenw10

The image is apparently writing correctly since you're seeing the bootloader. It may not be writing completely for example or perhaps your CF card has damage at a particular address.
If you have accidentally written the Nano_vga image you would see nothing or almost nothing after the bootloader. Do you have the actual urls of the images you're using? Did you check the downloaded image against its md5 sums?

Steve

LylythofEverblight

Hi Steve,
Yes, I've made sure everything is ok on the Serial part, never once selected VGA.

https://www.pfsense.org/download/download.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Ffiles.bgn.pfsense.org%2Fmirror%2Fdownloads%2FpfSense-2.1.4-RELEASE-4g-i386-nanobsd.img.gz
This was the mirror closest to me but from what I'm seeing, the md5 sums do not match up from the file listed on the download site and what I have, either in .gz format or as the .img.

stephenw10

Ok. If you've been following a few other threads you may have seen that there was an issue with nano update images due to a scripting error when 2.1.4 was released. All the updates were actually the nano_vga even though they were labelled as nano. See:
https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=78713.0
That issue is now fixed but it's possible there was something related that means your image is actually the nano_vga variant. The non-matching md5 seems very suspicious.
Try down loading a current image from a different mirror and recheck the md5 (against the zipped file).
Try using a 2.1.3 image and then upgrade to 2.1.4. The auto-upgrade images are now correct.

Steve

LylythofEverblight

Well, I finally got a matching md5 for the 4GB 2.1.4 but then I used the 2.1.3 like you said.
I did get it to go farther in the boot sequence and actually made it to the section where it states to hit Enter to boot immediately or any other key for command prompt.

Then, it happens again and resets itself and prevents me from moving any farther and dumps me back at the 1) 2) F6) menu.

stephenw10

Hmm, possibly some hardware fault then.
Does the box boot anything else successfully? The original Watchguard OS? The FreeDOS image?
Do you know the history of that box? Many of those original X-Core boxes have seen many hours in hot racks, my own X700 failed probably due to bad capacitors. Different to symptoms to your though.

Steve