Failure to write ISO to USB
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Dear members,
I'm writing here in frustration of not being able to make a bootable USB with any pfSense disk image (ver 2.3.4).
I've downloaded and tried with both versions (USB and CD image), on two different Operating Systems, with different software, with different flash drives and still can't get a working bootable stick.
a) Windows 10- Rufus: won't read any file - nor the .img file nor the .iso file (rufus should work fine with the .iso file but still can't read it)
- Win32DiskImager - reads both files fine, writes both files to USB. Can't boot from it, can't be read from Ubuntu nor Windows - failure.
- USB Image Tool Helper - same as Win32DiskImager, can be read, written, with null working result.
b) Ubuntu
- "DD"ed .img and .iso, can't be read. Not even the OS can read the USB stick after writing the files. (view attached images for reference)
Any further help, instructions or anything you believe I haven't tried will be very helpful.
Thank you in advance.
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on ubuntu, what is the output of
sha256sum pfSense-CE-memstick-2.3.4-RELEASE-amd64.img.gz
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It's normal that the stick after writing the image on it is not readable on Windows or Linux, the UFS filesystem used is unknown to any other OSes but FreeBSD. Win32DiskImager is the recommended tool for the job and I believe you actually have the image written on the stick correctly but it fails to boot for other reasons.
You might have a case of broken BIOS that tries to be too smart for its own good and rejects the unusual partition table and filesystem used on the image.
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on ubuntu, what is the output of
sha256sum pfSense-CE-memstick-2.3.4-RELEASE-amd64.img.gz
7406b45cbce9fa06865cf07d00f9e45251f9fffdd5a177d1bc222adfb7268a16 pfSense-CE-memstick-2.3.4-RELEASE-amd64.img.gz
It matches the sha256 sum of the download page.
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@kpa:
It's normal that the stick after writing the image on it is not readable on Windows or Linux, the UFS filesystem used is unknown to any other OSes but FreeBSD. Win32DiskImager is the recommended tool for the job and I believe you actually have the image written on the stick correctly but it fails to boot for other reasons.
You might have a case of broken BIOS that tries to be too smart for its own good and rejects the unusual partition table and filesystem used on the image.
I'm trying to boot on a pretty old PC (C2D E8400) and tried on an i7-2670qm as well. Would you recommend burning the img on a CD? Would that change anything?
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Try a CD with the CD image, the memstick image will not work on a CD/DVD.
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pfSense-CE-memstick-2.3.4-RELEASE-amd64.img = 709,894,144 bytes?
Rufus 2.9 had no problem to read this
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@kpa:
Try a CD with the CD image, the memstick image will not work on a CD/DVD.
CD did the magic. Booted, but getting tons of errors. Starting debugging all over again but at least I get an error! Better something that nothing!
pfSense-CE-memstick-2.3.4-RELEASE-amd64.img = 709,894,144 bytes?
Rufus 2.9 had no problem to read this
Exactly that size. Tried on 2.12 and 2.14 versions, none of them worked. Wrote successfully but wouldn't boot!
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For anyone interested.
CD did the work for me, no errors at all.Consider this closed. Thank you all for helping out. :)
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Not to beat a dead horse but pfSense-CE-2.3.4-RELEASE-amd64.iso mounted properly on Fedora 25 out of the box.
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Not to beat a dead horse but pfSense-CE-2.3.4-RELEASE-amd64.iso mounted properly on Fedora 25 out of the box.
I was able to mount the .iso on both Ubuntu and Windows. I wasn't able though to get a USB stick working properly. That's the part I wasn't able to figure out - not much to work with.
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Not to beat a dead horse but pfSense-CE-2.3.4-RELEASE-amd64.iso mounted properly on Fedora 25 out of the box.
The ISO image is readable on just about anything because it uses the standard ISO9660 filesystem. The memory stick image on the other hand uses a very unusual partitioning and the UFS filesystem that is only readable on FreeBSD and derivatives unless a special driver is used.
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pfSense-CE-memstick-2.3.4-RELEASE-amd64.img mounts properly on Fedora 25 out of the box also
mount -t ufs -o ufstype=ufs2,ro /dev/sdb4 /mnt/bsd
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Are you able to boot from any other USB flash drive (Windows/Linux etc.)? If not then probably BIOS settings need to be changed to enable booting from legacy devices. And also perhaps change the boot order and/or use the boot menu function key.
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I think i have a quite similar problem but this time i try to get it work with virtual box. it cant work with a hyperviser?, but from my view of the iso image file for the 64 bit version is not readable when i try to configure with virtual optical storage in the vbox settings.
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I created a BSD 64 bit vm in Virtualbox 5.1 and set pfSense-CE-2.3.4-RELEASE-amd64.iso as CD storage. It booted without any problems.
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you use win32diskimager burning file "pfSense-CE-memstick-2.3.4-RELEASE-amd64.img". 100% success!
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use 7 zip to extract the iso
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I had this issue before. My problem was when I wrote 64bit image to CF card and try to boot on 32bit system. There is no output indicating compatibility issue. It just stuck on bios screen. Got mad, thought pfSense was issue or my system was not reading the CF card. Or image never wrote to CF card. Put CF card back on computer and saw files on the CF card.
Vs when installing from CD/DVD the 64bit image will prompt error that 32bit system does not support long version.
Learned after several trial and error, the error was on my end. Ensure you downloaded the 32bit CF version for 32bit system. Ensure you downloaded the correct version for your system.
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This post is deleted!