Installing pfSense onto a SSD equipped with a USB Aux Port.

[ljc]

I was pleasantly surprised that the GSkill 64GB SSD drive (FM-25S2S-64GB) I chose to use with a Soekris net5501 was recognized as a USB drive by the pfSense installer (option 99).

While I powered the drive via the Soekris I attached its USB 2.0 port to my desktop machine and then booted the pfSense CD.

http://www2.mbari.org/~coletti/dropbox/Misc/FM-25S2S-64GB_With_USB.JPG

After the installer completed I connected the drive to the SATA interface on the Soekris and powered it back up.

http://www2.mbari.org/~coletti/dropbox/Misc/FM-25S2S-64GB_With_SATA.JPG

The boot and swap partitions were not initially found but a simple change to the fstab entries (listed below) fixed that. OK, I made that sound a lot less frustrating than it actually was!

$ more /etc/fstab

Device Mountpoint FStype Options Dump Pass#

/dev/ad1s1a / ufs rw 1 1
/dev/ad1s1b none swap sw 0 0

After that it booted without any problem and everything has been running fine ever since.

http://www2.mbari.org/~coletti/dropbox/Misc/FM-25S2S-64GB_Installed_1_net5501.JPG.JPG

-ljc