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    2.7.0 upgrade crash

    General pfSense Questions
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    • JonathanLeeJ
      JonathanLee @aiz
      last edited by JonathanLee

      @aiz my first PC was a At&T PC 6300 that rocked a 10MB drive ran DOS 3.11. I loved playing with autoexect.bat and config.sys files adding different drivers and menus so it would auto configure when it booted it was so cool. I use to have something called MS-DOSSHELL not the shell like today, it was a windows type file program that my mouse with would work with. Load mem upper, echo off, all sorts of fun when I was younger I was elementary school aged. I had this cool sound blaster 16 ISA card with a talking parrot and a microphone. Screen was monochrome green. I would research UEFI in your BIOS. You may need a reinstall with it enabled. Low level formats took forever remember those? When y2k was announced I thought everyone was crazy as it just rolled back over because I tested it before hand with my old system 😂

      Make sure to upvote

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      • JonathanLeeJ
        JonathanLee @aiz
        last edited by

        @aiz I just took a class on assembly code. Amazing stuff.

        Make sure to upvote

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        • A
          aiz @JonathanLee
          last edited by

          @JonathanLee

          I think you put your finger on the problem. The boxes I have were purchased in 2015. UEFI???? I'll take a look. But I still wonder why they booted fine before I restored the configuration and wouldn't boot after I restored the configuration. That was true if I used one of the install boots (MSDOS??) and not the other (UEFI???) boot. Wish I knew more about this. But I'll do some digging.

          My first "PC" was a Xerox 820 and then an 860 and then an IBM PC. Thanks for the memories.

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

            Is that screenshot where it appeared to hang after restoring the config?

            More commonly after restoring a config is to end up with the wrong console set as primary. Usually the last thing shown will be the NICs linking for example.

            Steve

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            • A
              aiz @stephenw10
              last edited by

              @stephenw10

              The screen shot is what happened during the reboot after the configuration restore.

              Thanks for your interest.

              Art

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              • stephenw10S
                stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                last edited by

                And it hangs in the same place if you try to install 2.7 with GPT?

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                • A
                  aiz @stephenw10
                  last edited by

                  @stephenw10

                  I believe that the hang was with GPT. The strange thing is that when I go into bios to select the memstick for boot, there were two choices. One allowed MSDOS MBR and the other said that MSDOS MBR was unbootable "with this platform" or something like that.

                  The crash occurred with GPT and with the version that said MSDOS MBR was unbootable. I hope this all makes sense. I really don't have much expertise here.

                  Art

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                  • stephenw10S
                    stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                    last edited by

                    The memstick can be booted EFI or Legacy BIOS and if your platform is configured to boot both it will show them as two choices.
                    The installer detects how it was booted and uses that to advise what install type can be booted. If your platform actually boots both it likely will work with either.

                    Steve

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                    • A
                      aiz @stephenw10
                      last edited by

                      @stephenw10
                      Thanks, I'm learning. When I boot in EFI with GPT, I get the crash after the restore. At least I am pretty sure that is the scenario.

                      Art

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                      • stephenw10S
                        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                        last edited by

                        OK so you boot EFI and install as GPT and that all works OK?

                        It then boots up OK and you restore the config in the GUI?

                        Then when it reboots it hangs at that screenshot above?

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                        • A
                          aiz @stephenw10
                          last edited by

                          @stephenw10

                          That's correct.

                          The other thing I will note is that when 2.7.0 came out, I tried the usual upgrade online. The result was the same crash after the upgrade was installed.

                          That's what led me to try a complete reinstall of the software.

                          Art

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                          • stephenw10S
                            stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                            last edited by

                            Hmm, well that pretty much must be a console setting in the config you're importing. Check the main <system> section at the top of the file for console values.

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                            • A
                              aiz @stephenw10
                              last edited by

                              @stephenw10

                              I'm afraid I'm not sure what to look for. However, I do see that the primary console setting is "serial". In fact the box I am using is "vga".

                              I'll change that and see what happens.

                              Thanks for the hint.

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                              • stephenw10S
                                stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                last edited by

                                Yup, remove that line from the config so it uses the default console which looks like it's the EFI console there.

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                                • A
                                  aiz @stephenw10
                                  last edited by

                                  @stephenw10

                                  Your suggestion seemed very logical as it might explain the crash after the online update.

                                  I removed the line in the configuration file and I also tried changing the line to designate "video" rather than "serial". Both gave the same result. Before the changes, the boot up stopped with a blank screen with a blinking cursor. After the changes, the boot up stopped with an alphanumeric graphic of the pfSense logo and a flashing cursor. The boot did not complete.

                                  Since I am not seeing complaints from others, it looks like this is issue may be the result of a 10 year old bios in my Gigbox units. It appears that something is destroying the UEFI file when I do the configuration file restore.

                                  I'll stick with bios. It will be interesting to see what happens during the next pfSense update.

                                  Thanks for your suggestion and help.

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