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    How to have pfsense automatically boot into multi?

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
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    • L
      lukeai
      last edited by stephenw10

      How to have pfsense automatically boot in multi user mode after a short timeout instead of waiting for me to plug in a keyboard and press "1"?

      (2.4.4-p3 on pondesk Intel-E3845-4-LAN-1-COM-AESNI-4G-Fanless-Firewall-Router_MNHO-073)

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      • provelsP
        provels
        last edited by provels

        Check /boot/loader.conf and make sure

        autoboot_delay="3"
        

        is present. But the stock install should have done that...

        Peder

        MAIN - pfSense+ 24.11-RELEASE - Adlink MXE-5401, i7, 16 GB RAM, 64 GB SSD. 500 GB HDD for SyslogNG
        BACKUP - pfSense+ 23.01-RELEASE - Hyper-V Virtual Machine, Gen 1, 2 v-CPUs, 3 GB RAM, 8GB VHDX (Dynamic)

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        • L
          lukeai
          last edited by lukeai

          Thanks for replying, I can confirm that autoboot_delay="3" is present in /boot/loader.conf and that I have made no changes at all to the stock configuration.

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          • provelsP
            provels
            last edited by

            All righty. I'm not familiar with your specific hardware, but is there a BIOS setting to "Halt on error"? If so, can you set to "Halt on error except keyboard"?

            Peder

            MAIN - pfSense+ 24.11-RELEASE - Adlink MXE-5401, i7, 16 GB RAM, 64 GB SSD. 500 GB HDD for SyslogNG
            BACKUP - pfSense+ 23.01-RELEASE - Hyper-V Virtual Machine, Gen 1, 2 v-CPUs, 3 GB RAM, 8GB VHDX (Dynamic)

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            • L
              lukeai
              last edited by

              I have looked thoroughly through the BIOS and cannot find any option relating to Halting or Errors. Is there anything else it could be called?

              dmidecode tells me that I have v. 5.5.5 American Megatrends although if I press 'Del' and enter setup on boot I get Aptio Setup Utility 2.17.1249

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              • provelsP
                provels
                last edited by provels

                Anything like this? Or "Integrated Peripherals" or "Device Options"?
                c5017392-7dba-4414-96de-b18699de3258-image.png

                Peder

                MAIN - pfSense+ 24.11-RELEASE - Adlink MXE-5401, i7, 16 GB RAM, 64 GB SSD. 500 GB HDD for SyslogNG
                BACKUP - pfSense+ 23.01-RELEASE - Hyper-V Virtual Machine, Gen 1, 2 v-CPUs, 3 GB RAM, 8GB VHDX (Dynamic)

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                • stephenw10S
                  stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                  last edited by

                  It would halt in the BIOS not the boot loader if that were the case.

                  It should normally continue past that point automatically. Has this always happened? It has stopped there everytime after you installed? What exact image did you install from?

                  Steve

                  L 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • L
                    lukeai @stephenw10
                    last edited by

                    @stephenw10
                    I installed two days ago from the latest image 2.4.4-p3 amd64, usb memstick installer, console VGA - the sha256 sum confirms the image was correct. I used GPT on the USB drive. This is how it has been since I installed. I have tried installing twice (only difference was using a different USB port usb2 and usb3 for the installer, had a wild idea that this might somehow affect something), Both installs had this behaviour.

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                    • stephenw10S
                      stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                      last edited by

                      Hmm, it should only stop there if it sees some input at that point.

                      You could try setting autoboot_delay="0" to stop it waiting there at all.

                      Steve

                      L 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • L
                        lukeai @stephenw10
                        last edited by

                        @stephenw10 I have set auto_boot_delay="0", this did not chang the boot behaviour at all as described earlier.

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                        • stephenw10S
                          stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                          last edited by

                          Hmm, well you might try installing using MBR instead, that does make it boot slightly differently.

                          Steve

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                          • L
                            lukeai
                            last edited by

                            OK I reinstalled with an MBR disk layout and that enabled a visible timeout which gave way to a hanging "boot..." which was resolved with this I guess this was the issue all along but I now have a working system so I'm not going to reinstall yet again. Thanks for suggestions both.

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                            • stephenw10S
                              stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                              last edited by stephenw10

                              That blog post is wrong (at least partially 😉 ). You should add that to /boot/loader.conf.local to avoid it being overwritten.

                              See our intructions for that here: https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/install/upgrade-guide.html?highlight=kern%20vty#upgrading-from-versions-older-than-pfsense-2-4-4

                              Steve

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