SOLVED: Upgrading from 2.2 RC
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What is the price of two USB sticks as today?
I got two of them, theSanDisk 64GB Ultra USB Flash Drive USB 3.0
and the
SanDisk 64GB Ultra USB Flash Drive USB 2.0
each for 9 € over amazon.de. You can send them
by postal express mail to the point where your pfSense
is standing and it will be arriving in one or two days else where, pending on the given distance. As today it would be not the problem that someone is stitching it in and
call you by phone.You should follow the tip from @stephenw10 and try out the vga image. There are three images out for installation.
DVD ISO
pfSense-CE-2.6.0-RELEASE-amd64.iso.gzUSB (serial console)
pfSense-CE-memstick-serial-2.6.0-RELEASE-amd64.img.gzUSB (vga console)
pfSense-CE-memstick-2.6.0-RELEASE-amd64.img.gzI would try out to save the config backup and then
installing it new (fresh install) with 2.6 and play back
the config. -
The fact you are able to try booting an ISO remotely tells me you're using the SM IPMI. Is that true?
Booting from that has given problems in the past especially if the IPMI version on the unit is old.
My recommendation is to use the 2.6 memstick-vga image written to a USB drive local to the firewall. That's by far the most likely option to work.
Steve
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@stephenw10 said in Upgrading from 2.2 RC:
Booting from that has given problems in the past especially if the IPMI version on the unit is old.
I'd assume that's the problem. I have an older box running around with an SM-IPMI and I never got remote ISO mounting running in the first place as it always broke half way through. So no, these aren't the most reliant and OP should really get a USB stick to the box and just run it from there!
@lewis said in Upgrading from 2.2 RC:
Why??? Why is netgate doing that? So much useful old hardware out there that can be used as firewalls.
I don't even understand your "why"? That note only said that the old live-iso is deprecated and vanished. But the normal ISO is still around and working just fine. Why get the panties in a knot over a stone-old live-CD ISO? Don't get it. As of those comments about so many hardware out there - yeah there is. So? Check if it's 64bit and the HW works with the current version, take your USB memstick with a 2.6 memstick image on it and bring them online! No one's deprecating old boxes besides those stone old 32bit only boxes or the one with bad MoBos that only ran in 32bit mode. Nothing to cry over.
Cheers
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Panties in a knot? LOL. Talk about a childish statement. Please, take your drama to someone else's post.
The box is not 32bit, I shared the CPU info and what little info I have :).Several of the things pointed out in the last few posts were already covered earlier. If they were not, simply ask for clarity and I'll be happy to respond.
I would try out to save the config backup and then
installing it new (fresh install) with 2.6 and play back
the config.There is no config to save. This is an install issue. 2.6.0 was tried, as were several others all the way down to 1.2.3 out of curiosity at that point. 1.2.3 actually installed.
Not sure that anyone said usb sticks being too expensive. Usb sticks were tried. Someone mentioned using cheap sticks might cause a problem. The exact same problem shows up using virtual cdrom as well.
When you are remote to something, you have little choice but to count on what the folks who are physically there can do for you. My challenge is just trying to find a way to install pfsense onto an older server that for all intents and purposes should work.
I've been able to install pfsense on countless servers, old and new. Some fought me the entire time while some were just finicky but I've always had them physically. This is not the case so I have to work with that I've got.
BTW, the BIOS was fully upgraded yesterday and the problem remains.
The usb image also doesn't work. I might try one more time and share an image. I took several images but I lost track of which were what at this stage. I was using each at the time to try and remember what the installer was showing for errors. Happy to share those if anyone's interested. -
You see the same error booting the 2.6 USB image from a local USB drive?
What devices are shown when you enter
?at the mountroot> prompt? -
@stephenw10 I didn't take any images of that since I could see the devices when using the question mark. A couple of them show pfsense images which makes sense since I had both a usb stick and cdrom mounted.
Using ufs/dev/xxx only lead to error 19 even if I was trying to use the correct device.
I think this thread is done. I'll try to share more if I get anything but at this point, there are people at the server working on it since I cannot do it from remote. I don't yet know if they will accomplish it but if they do, I'll ask for as much info as I can get. If they can't, the plan is to move to a newer server.
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Ok. It will certainly be easier to accomplish locally.
Let us know what happens.
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I mentioned that the ISO install loading was virtual media and not physical. The usb stick was physical but it didn't work either.
I asked if someone could cut a cdrom but no one could.However, this morning, someone was able to get to the physical server.
2.6.0 finally got installed using a physical cdrom.The person told me the following things.
Using the "virtual"ISO is what was causing issues with how BSD handled its bootup. It apparently was not able to detect the virtual iso it so it failed to load itself causing the error 19.
For the USB drives, he did not look into it much but guesses its more BSD quirks about how the image was burned to the usb drive.
For this install, he loaded the ISO into the IPMI console.
For the exact reason in how it differed on the backside and why the other method worked, he is not able to say other than it appears to act more as a "real" cdrom instead of virtual ISO so installer was able to find and load it's needed files. BSD does not seem to work well with this particular servers 'virtual' methods.
So that's that. Another lesson from another unusual (to me) problem. Hope this thread can help someone and also hope no drama will be added to a now completed thread so that it might help someone that finds it.
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@lewis said in Upgrading from 2.2 RC:
Hope this thread can help someone and also hope no drama will be added........
Balena Etcher & Memstick serial iso download and pushing to the USB stick ca. 10 minutes
Fresh install then on an APU6B4 ca. 10 minutes more with
config backup playback all in all is done in ca. 30 minutes!So I really don´t know what drama you are talking about.
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@dobby_ said in Upgrading from 2.2 RC:
@lewis said in Upgrading from 2.2 RC:
Hope this thread can help someone and also hope no drama will be added........
Balena Etcher & Memstick serial iso download and pushing to the USB stick ca. 10 minutes
Fresh install then on an APU6B4 ca. 10 minutes more with
config backup playback all in all is done in ca. 30 minutes!So I really don´t know what drama you are talking about.
Really no idea what so ever why you bothered to post that. As I said, in most cases I've never had problems but in this case, I was remote and virtual media didn't work. That's the end result of the experience.
Done, finished, not much else to go on about :)
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Ah, so to be clear the initial attempt there were not using the Supermicro IPMI?
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@stephenw10 said in Upgrading from 2.2 RC:
Ah, so to be clear the initial attempt there were not using the Supermicro IPMI?
Correct. Sorry I didn't clarify that.
I wanted to (a couple times) but was pretty caught up in the effort and forgot to. -
No worries, thanks for clarifying. We have seen issues using the virtual optical drive in IPMI.
Steve
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For anyone that comes across this, to sum up, using a Spider KVM and attaching virtual media to that is what was not working, at least not with BSD.
Using the servers IPMI virtual functions worked.
