Cannot boot

[toad]

Hi,

After installing pfSense 1.2.2 on a USB stick (4 GB Kingston) from LiveCD, Im unable to boot it from the USB key.
The USB key is recognized by the BIOS, the bootloader starts but it fails to find the good partition apparently, I have those messages at boot:

Not ufs
Not ufs
No /boot/loader

pfSense/i386 boot
Default: 0:fd(0,a)/boot/kernel/kernel
boot:
Not ufs
No /boot/kernel/kernel

I tried to play with da(0,a) but all I get is : error 1 lba 0 (and I dont understand this message already..)

I used the automatic partitionning from the installer: / 3GB 4.2BSD and swap 1GB on /dev/da0:

/ /dev/da0s1a
swap /dev/da0s1b

Any hint would be greatly appreciated as I spent the whole sunday on it and couldn't make it work :/

Thanks.

[wallabybob]

Have you tried pfSense 1.2.3 - generally the hardware supports works better than in 1.2.2. See http://blog.pfsense.org/?p=377

pfSense/i386 boot
Default: 0:fd(0,a)/boot/kernel/kernel
boot:
Not ufs
No /boot/kernel/kernel

I may be mistaken, but the fd(0,a) looks like the system is trying to boot off a floppy drive (slice 0, partition a).

[toad]

Well I didn't try pfSense 1.2.3, I didn't even know it existed :) I will check it out right away, thanks, but how could this be a hardware related problem ?

Yeah fd(0,a) seems to be the floppy disk, which is deactivated in the bios, so maybe at boot time, my usb key is recognized as a floppy drive, who knows.
I would be curious to know which hardware I have access to at boot time but I couldnt find anything to probe it with the current boot loader.

[toad]

I just tried to install 1.2.3 and I cannot install grub (as for 1.2.2):

'The file /mnt/boot/grub/xfs_stage1_5 not read correctly'
[..same sentences for each stage..]

then:

grub> root (hd0,0,a)
Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0xa5
grub> setup –stage2=/mnt/boot/grub/stage2 --prefix=/boot/grub (hd0)

Error 17: Cannot mount selected partition (of course its already mounted on /mnt!)
grub> quit
->>>> Exist status: 1

If that hint can help.. :)

[toad]

Nope, it doesnt work with 1.2.3, same boot errors :/

[trunglam]

I was try many time with many version but still can not boot.
any body can help us?

[Cry Havok]

Have you tried a base FreeBSD 7.1 install?