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    Netgate 7100 - Boot to USB 3.0 ?

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Official Netgate® Hardware
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    • E
      emmdee
      last edited by

      I have successfully tested the upgrade/downgrade Netgate pfSense+ 23.05 <> 22.05 firmware installs on several 7100-1U devices.

      All the test devices had a USB 2.0 flash drive for the install media and it worked perfectly fine.

      However, I have a few 7100's in the fleet that have a USB 3.0 flash drive and I cannot seem to get the 7100 to detect the USB 3.0 flash drive during POST/startup. It doesn't show in the boot menu. Yes, I am using the blue 3.0 physical port on the device.

      Every install I've tried from a USB 2.0 drive seems to work fine, it's just the 3.0 drives that aren't detected.

      Since it's not mentioned in the docs about drive compatibility, can I get confirmation that the 7100-1U system firmware/bios does not support booting to USB 3.0 drives? It reads the 3.0 drive fine for OS usage and for ECL usage, just not for booting.

      Reference: https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/install/write-memstick.html

      NollipfSenseN 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • NollipfSenseN
        NollipfSense @emmdee
        last edited by

        @emmdee said in Netgate 7100 - Boot to USB 3.0 ?:

        Yes, I am using the blue 3.0 physical port on the device.

        So, plugging a keyboard in that USB port or a flash drive with install media results nothing...no acknowledgement?

        pfSense+ 23.09 Lenovo Thinkcentre M93P SFF Quadcore i7 dual Raid-ZFS 128GB-SSD 32GB-RAM PCI-Intel i350-t4 NIC, -Intel QAT 8950.
        pfSense+ 23.09 VM-Proxmox, Dell Precision Xeon-W2155 Nvme 500GB-ZFS 128GB-RAM PCIe-Intel i350-t4, Intel QAT-8950, P-cloud.

        E 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • E
          emmdee @NollipfSense
          last edited by

          @NollipfSense Thanks for the reply. The device is thousands of miles away I have no keyboards... this is all done through a console connection. The USB 3.0 drive/port works fine for all non-booting purposes, it just doesn't get detected for booting. Different devices that have USB 2.0 flash drive works fine for booting.

          Basically my question is to confirm that I need to order and ship USB 2.0 flash drives to the affected sites that currently have 3.0 flash drives, OR if this issue is some sort of red herring and USB 3.0 should be working for boot media on a Netgate 7100-1U

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          • jimpJ jimp moved this topic from Problems Installing or Upgrading pfSense Software on
          • stephenw10S
            stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
            last edited by

            Did you try the USB3 drives in one of the USB2 ports? They should be backwards compatible and boot fine there.

            Steve

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            • AndyRHA
              AndyRH
              last edited by

              I have used both in mine with no issue. Because the system is far from you, did you make and mail the USB drives or did a local make the USB drive? Maybe the USB drive is not bootable.

              o||||o
              7100-1u

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