Install on one system, boot up on another?

[slitherposh]

I'm having a lot of trouble installing 2.4.3 AMD 64 on my dedicated pfSense box, it won't even boot the CD when I try to load it, just crashes half way through. I could ONLY install 2.3.5 AMD 64 (no 32bit would work for either) on the box. Then, when I get it all setup, I go in and try to test installing a package. That fails with this error:

WARNING: Current pkg repository has a new OS major version.
         pfSense should be upgraded before doing any other
         operation
Failed

So, I attempt to run the update feature from the System tab. The upgrade runs for 2.4.1 and on reboot, it fails. However, it's already copied the Kernel over to kernel.old. So when I boot, I have to choose the old Kernel to boot to, otherwise I get an infinite boot loop.

The first time I boot to the .old kernel, it wants to finish the failed upgrade, but in doing so it upgrades to 2.4.3_1 instead of 2.4.1, and it says it's completed, but it didn't really. I still can't install any packages, I get the same error as above. The system keeps saying it's up to date, so it's quite confused. It says it's up to date in some places, but in others like package install it's not. I dare not try to do another upgrade, I did that last time, and it copied the corrupted kernel to kernel.old an then failed again, leaving me with no good kernel to work with. I had to completely wipe and toss my install and reinstall.

So here I am, with a pfSense install that cannot install packages, and cannot block anything unless done so manually. I only have today to work on this thing, and could really use some help, if anyone is kind enough to offer it. I was smart enough this time to backup my configs, so at least that's good. Anyways, I'm just going to be right here troubleshooting, hopefully some help comes soon. Thanks everyone :)

EDIT: Forgot to ask, would it be a big deal if I took the drive out of the dedicated box, and installed it while it was in my much better desktop PC, and then moved it back over? Or would that cause problems anyways?

[stephenw10]

If you need to remain on 2.3.5_2 you should go to System > Updates and set the branch to Legacy stable version, security/errata 2.3.X only before you try to install any packages.

Yes you can install on another machine and swap the hd across. It will dump you at the console assign interfaces screen though if the NICs are different.

Steve

[Gertjan]

Added to that :
When you install a pfSense, why not using the latest version of a branch right away ?
On the other hand, it's good to see how it update/upgrade itself, this is actually a pretty straight forward process.
When it starts to complain it can not update itself, handle your box identical as a Windows PC with the same issue : ditch is really fast. Btw : I presume that you did set up WAN correctly, and you didn't break DNS capabilities.

If you have real "64 bit capable hardware" and you can't install a recent 2.4.x pfSense version because of a FreeBSD 11 kernel versus hardware conflict, you only have one option is : use the BIOS and shut things down (or ripe out the hardware that FreeBSD doesn't like).
Running a 2.3.5 is a dead-end solution, and can only be considered as temporary..