PFSENSE booting problem – please help

3vian

Installing pfSense on top of FreeBSD didn't work. Probably didn't help that I didn't know what I was doing…

wallabybob

I can't understand how FreeBSD would install and not pfSense.

I'm not sure what version of pfSense you have been trying to install. pfSense 1.2.2 is based on FreeBSD 7.0. You successfully installed FreeBSD 7.1. That suggests it may be worth trying pfSense 1.2.3 (PRERELEASE-TESTING) which is based on FreeBSD 7.1.

FreeBSD's hardware support sometimes lags that of other popular operating systems, particularly when encountering devices that don't quite behave according to specification or have their own unusual interpretation of the specification. I have two different types of USB adapters for notebook drives. One works well on FreeBSD, the three different versions of Linux I tried and Windows 2000. The other didn't work on FreeBSD 7.0 (frequently reported errors), didn't work on Linux 2.6.1x (can't remember the version exactly) but did work with Windows 2000 and Linux 2.6.2x (2x = 22 or 24 if I remember correctly). The second type was listed listed in a Linux driver file among types with "unusual" behaviour, the first type wasn't. You may have a similar sort of issue with your disk controller.

3vian

I've already tried 1.2.3 early. Tried it again, still no luck. I even tried 2.0.

I would have given up by now and moved onto another distro, but I really want to run my pbx on my router. I alreay have pfSense, trixbox, Windows 2008 and then my workstation - this is just for my home. You can imagine the electric bill. If I could get pfSense on this 1U server and then use the FreeSwitch package that would be great.

wallabybob

Lets try to simplify the situation. Can you boot FreeBSD 7.1 again and post the dmesg output so we get a report of what is in the system and FreeBSD's view of what is in the system.

The Tyan Tiger i7501R motherboard looks as if its been around for a while so I would expect the FreeBSD support for the chipset should have been fairly well exercised by now.

I've already tried 1.2.3 early. Tried it again, still no luck. I even tried 2.0.

What exactly is the problem "tried it again, still no luck"? pfSense install completes? with or without GRUB? pfSense install fails? If so, what error?

You earlier reported:

I noticed that my bios seems to assign the HDD and CD to random channels after every bootup - something the hdd will be on 0 and then the next time on 3.

Is this still happening? What report leads you to believe this is happening? (For example, if you boot FreeBSD 7.1 a few times is the hard drive sometimes reported as ad0 and sometimes as ad3?)

What is your drive configuration: is the CD S-ATA or P-ATA? The hard disk is P-ATA?

3vian

Thanks for the all the help, but I've given up. Or at least given up installng it directly. I've installed VMware ESXi, so will see how that goes.

sierradump

For what it is worth - I have this SAME motherboard… and I have solved the booting problem...

I have a Single 40GB Sata hardrive.

Here is what I did...

1.) Reset the bios to "load optimized defaults"

2.) Boot from the CD-ROM ( I confirmed this both with USB EXTERNAL AND IDE drives)

3.) Change your configs in the terminal to what you need them (i.e. setup the interfaces, ip addresses, etc...)

4.) Choose option 99 to install to hardrive.

5.) USING THE OPTIMIZED DEFAULTS IN BIOS, It finds my Single SATA drive as AD4.

6.) I choose this disk to install to.

7.) ACCEPT THE DEFAULT CONFIGURATIONS THAT THE INSTALLER PROPOSES (i.e. format using defaults, partition using defaults etc...)

8.) IMPORTANT - ONCE YOU GET TO THE BOOTLOCK SCREEN --- ACCEPT THE DEFAULT BOOTLOCK.

9.) Finish the install and reboot.

10.) I unplugged my USB CD-ROM (and also unplugged an ide drive on 2nd install) after the machine rebooted...

11.) It booted right up into the BSD Terminal for me - NO ERRORS AT ALL...

IF YOU NEED EXACT BIOS SETTINGS I SUPPOSE I CAN BOOT BACK IN AND LOOK AT THESE FOR YOU... SHOOT ME AN E-MAIL OR PM...

smith02

Hello,
Yesterday I had the same problem about
booting the 1.2.2 version, but now I've installed
it without any errors. What I did is set the harddisk
parameter manually in the bios as freeBSD is
reading it not correctly. I,m using the old p4 2.4GHZ
on MSI Mobo.
I just thought this might help.

sierradump

Sorry for off topic, but I have SEVERAL of these server boards (the Tyan Tiger i7501R) – I am very interested to hear if you were able to install ESXi ???

Please let me know either way! Thanks!

Guest

Hey,

I just experienced the same problem with 2 different laptop ide drives. One is a 60gb Fujitsu, the other is a 80gb Seagate. I tracked my problems down to the parallel ata cable. I was using a 40 conductor because it didn't have the middle pin blocked out like the 80 conductress do and my laptop ide converter has that extra pin. with the 40 conductor cable and a full 3.5" 10gb hard drive, everything worked fine. I solved the problem by bending the extra pin out of the way on the adapter and upgrading to a 80 conductor cable. I didn't read the entire thread so I'm not sure any of this will help you. Now im running on a quiet, efficient, WAY OVER SIZED hard drive. Guess that means i will have to increase the amount of space allotted to the proxy ;D I just thought I would share my experience with the same error.

Hope this helps and you don't give up on pfsense. It is the best product out there for just about all applications.
-V

ToxIcon

HI all made a little progress with the Tiger i7501R board I got it to boot to the welcome to pfsense
where you can chose how to boot 1, 2, 3 and so on, but then it get to this line and seem to get stuck

[boot/Kernel/acpi-ko text -0x525d0 data-0x23a0+0x186csymc=[0x4+0x8600+0x4+0xb0a]
|
|
_ just blinks

I disable CPU Hyper-Threading to get it boot to the above

do any one have a !u server that boots all the way and can paste their bios settings here thanks

tranquilnet

I was having a similar boot error on pfsense 1.2.2 after the full live CD ISO install:

hptrr: no controller found
ad4: FAILURE - SET_MULTI status=51 <ready,dsc,error>error=4 <aborted>My Hardware:

Motherboard SuperServer 5015B-MRB
http://www.supermicro.com/products/system/1U/5015/SYS-5015B-MR.cfm

Processor Xeon Dual Core 3065 2.33 4M 1333fsb Boxed

Memory 4GB (4 x 1GB) 667MHz DDRII Unbuffered ECC Memory

I installed pfsense with no swap on a 40 Pin IDE 1GB Dual embedded disk module (SLC).

http://www.innodisk.com/production.jsp?flashid=81

I ended up changing the BIOS setting for this IDE ad4 device by entering the BIOS ~~and selecting:

Ext. Primary Master [1048MB]

and changing the settings from [auto] to [user]

and changing the Transfer Mode to [FPIO 4 / DMA 2]

and changing the Ultra DMA Mode to [Mode 4]

After doing this, everything booted fine.

-Will http://www.tranquilnet.com~~</aborted></ready,dsc,error>

SeanT

I had this same problem also, it would get the FreeBSD boot loader after pfsense 1.2.2 installation and do a face plant at

Default F1
FreBSD

/

After reading this thread I played around with the BIOS settings which made no difference.

I also tried installing FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE and it worked fine.
After installing FreeBSD 7.0 I tried to install pfsense over the existing partition without recreating it and that got me a little farther, I got past the boot loader however it couldn't find the kernel.

Next I tried installing pfsense on a USB thumb drive, this method was able to boot!
However using a 4GB thumb drive over the 250GB SATA hard drive in the server was not a viable solution for me.
I booted off the thumb drive and changed /etc/fstab to point to the internal HD installation of pfsense, rebooted and crossed my fingers.

I now have a working installation of pfsense running off the HD but booting off a 4GB thumb drive
I hope this helps someone else get past the booting problem, I know I spent a few days trying to get it to work right then gave up and made it work. My pfsense server has been up and running for over 30 days with no problems, sorry for not posting my work around sooner.

sippy

I'd just like to say that I had the same problem and what solved it for me was resetting my BIOS settings to "Default Optimized Settings" , as an earlier post indicated. I think what was this reset was the onboard RAID controller config that came with this mobo (about 5 years old – Gigabyte model). I had messed with it years ago and changed the RAID mode for some reason.

I know these aren't very useful details, but hopefully it can point some others in the right direction.

Elsewhere

I had problems with my USP keyboard and some of my network cards. I´ve tried every solution that the forum could provide and then i accidentally read about the 1.2.3 version.

http://blog.pfsense.org/?p=377

This solved all my problems! The even the USB keyboard is working without any workaround.

jchuerta

I think I got the answer just go to the bios and disable the keyboard num lock option an then install pfsense again .. :P

chrisg

I have an ASUS P5LD2-VM motherboard, installing version 1.2.3, 300GB SATA drive, and was having these problems as well. I enabled "Compatability Mode, PATA+SATA" in the BIOS setting and this didn't fix it, but did change the device from ad10 to ad2. I then specified during a new install ~10GB for first partition (and the remaining 280GB for second partition), and cleared the "Packet Mode" check box in the Bootblocker installation dialog. It works now. I'm not sure if it was the smaller partition size (I was just doing a 300GB, entire drive partition) or if clearing "Packet Mode" during install that did the trick.

lightenup

I just wanted to share my experience. My friend and I both have a system based on an older Intel D915PGNL 915P motherboard with SATA drives. Accepting the defaults during install would result in pfSense hanging while trying to boot off of the HDD. I upgraded to the latest bios and loaded system defaults, this had no effect, enabling legacy HDD mode did not help either. After reading some threads in the forum, I decided to partition my 160gb drive and disable 'packet mode', I gave the primary partition 20gb and allocated the rest to the second partition. Once this was done everything booted up properly.

Light

sullrich

This topic is old. However folks seeing problems should check this document out: http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Boot_Troubleshooting