RCC-VE 2440 won't boot after unplugging for a month
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My trusty RCC-VE 2440 turned four this week. I moved it between sites and let it unplugged for a month. Firing it back up, I can interact with the firmware boot-picker fine, but it never makes any progress from the moment it tries to load any OS, whether the (previously) working pfSense 2.4.5 install on the eMMC, or a number of other headless unix distros via either USB port from multiple USB sticks.
- Booter/firmware version:
SeaBIOS (version SageBIOS-20170918_115655-localhost.localdomain)- The built-in eMMC enumerates properly in the book picker:
Select boot device: 1. USB MSC Drive Generic Ultra HS-COMBO 1.98 2. iPXE (PCI 00:14.0) 3. iPXE (PCI 00:14.1) 4. iPXE (PCI 00:14.2) 5. iPXE (PCI 00:14.3) 6. Payload [setup]- Built-in eMMC pfSense 2.4.5 hangs at this point with a blinking cursor.
iPXE (http://ipxe.org) 00:14.3 C400 PCI2.10 PnP PMM 7FB7EED0 7FADEED0 C400 Press F12 for boot menu. F1 pfSense F6 PXE Boot: F5 |- pfSense 2.4.5 external USB
+------------Welcome to pfSense-----------+ __________________________ | | / ___\ | 1. Boot Multi User [Enter] | | /` | 2. Boot [S]ingle User | | / :-| | 3. [Esc]ape to loader prompt | | _________ ___/ /_ | | 4. Reboot | | /` ____ / /__ ___/ | | | | / / / / / / | | Options: | | / /___/ / / / | | 5. [K]ernel: kernel (1 of 2) | | / ______/ / / | | 6. Configure Boot [O]ptions... | |/ / / / | | | / /___/ | | | / | | | /_________________________/ +-----------------------------------------+ /boot/kernel/kernel text=0x17c1930 data=0xb93d38+0x557b28 syms=[0x8+0x197400+0x8 +0x197f72] Booting... /- CentOS 8.1 & Fedora 32 have cosmetically identical boot screens. After the timer or pressing Enter, screen is cleared and there's just a blinking cursor.
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | CentOS Linux 8 | |----------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | | | | | Install CentOS Linux 8 | | Test this media & install CentOS Linux 8 | | | | Troubleshooting > | | | | | | | | Press Tab for full configuration options on menu items. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Automatic boot in 52 seconds... | | | +----------------------------------------------------------------------------------+My hunch is that the 4 year old CR2032 battery flaked while unplugged and there's a preposterous date value stored somewhere that all of these OSes read early on. I swapped in a new good CR2032, to no avail.
Any suggestions are very welcome. I was really looking forward to swapping this box in a home for the old machine I've been using since pfSense 1.2.1 which I installed over Christmas in 2008.
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If you're getting that far, then that's a good sign at least.
To me it looks like it's using the wrong console port past that point. The BIOS/initial boot is going to the right port but after that it may be switching to the wrong port.
That's almost certainly the case for the pfSense USB image unless you used the correct one named "ADI".
Linux bootable drives would have the same issue, you have to edit the boot parameters and tell it to use the right port.
In each case you'll want to direct them to use com2 /
0x2F8/console=ttyS1,115200n8or similar depending on the OS.
