23.01 RC Hangs on Reboot Unless HDMI Video Connected
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I have a small form factor PC configured with an i7 processor and a 4-port Intel GigE card that has been running pfSense for the past 4+ years in a "headless" configuration. For most of this time, it has been running whatever the current stable release is of pfSense. Until trying the 23.01 RC recently, it had been running pfSense+ 22.05 for the past 6 months or more and was always rock solid regardless of the version.
I updated to 23.01 RC via the web interface as per usual, and the update process appeared to complete without error. However, the computer stalled somewhere after reboot, but because I do not normally have a monitor attached I did not see where exactly. I waited for 20 minutes or so for the reboot to complete, but it never did and none of the interfaces were responding to ping. I connected a monitor (via HDMI, the only video port on the computer) and keyboard to the computer, but got no visible display.
So I powered off the computer and restarted it with the keyboard and display attached. This time, the computer started 23.01 RC with no obvious errors and it operated exactly as expected. In this configuration, I rebooted a few more times to confirm, and it always restarted - no problem. I then removed the keyboard and restarted it a few times - again no problems. Last, I removed the HDMI video connection to the monitor and rebooted - every time the computer would hang on reboot before the NICs were active. If I connected the HDMI back after rebooting, there was no change (boot would not complete) and no visible display. I would have to power-cycle the computer with HDMI connected, then it would go back to normal. This bizarre problem is a first for me. Any ideas?
In the meantime, I switched back to my 22.05 boot environment and all is well again.
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I had a similar problem with a 22.05 system that I reset to factory defaults and it would hang part way thru the boot process. The last line in output was "Dual Console: Serial Primary, Video Secondary". I found a post on the FreeBSD forums that mentioned Dual console configurations (https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/dual-console-configuration.73825/). In the last post it mentions adding some settings to the loader.conf. Since I was using the IPMI interface on my box, I dropped into the boot loader and added the following setting:
boot_serial="NO"
then continued the boot process and was able to get to the point where I could reconfigure the interfaces and then upgrade to 23.01-RC.
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@g-shaffer That is great info. With the...
boot_serial="NO"
...line present in loader.conf, it did boot normally without the video connection present. I later updated to the latest RC and the problem has remained at bay. Thanks!