SG-2440 won't fully boot into PFsense

taltman

Hi there,

I purchased a PFsense SG-2440 firewall appliance in 2016. It has worked reliably for me since then, until yesterday. When trying to set it up in a new networking closet, it stopped responding, even though the blinkenlights were still showing.

I downloaded the driver for connecting to the console, put in the cord, and connected. Attached please find a screenshot of what I am able to see. It looks like the BIOS loads, and then tries to load the PFsense OS, and then it freezes. I'm able to get into the boot menu by hitting F12, but other menu options don't seem to work (no response after striking those keys).

I think I read on Reddit or this forum that the CPU that this appliance uses has a known bug that might prematurely end its life. Is that what is happening here?

Since I'm not able to get into the PFsense OS, what are my options here? Should I try clearing out the NVRAM? Is there a way to flash the firmware to bring the appliance back to life?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

Best regards,

~Tomer

taltman

@taltman Here's the console output:

SeaBIOS (version SageBIOS-20160122_083040-localhost.localdomain)

iPXE (http://ipxe.org) 00:14.0 C100 PCI2.10 PnP PMM+7FB7EE20+7FADEE20 C100
                                                                              
iPXE (http://ipxe.org) 00:14.1 C200 PCI2.10 PnP PMM 7FB7EE20 7FADEE20 C200

iPXE (http://ipxe.org) 00:14.2 C300 PCI2.10 PnP PMM 7FB7EE20 7FADEE20 C300

iPXE (http://ipxe.org) 00:14.3 C400 PCI2.10 PnP PMM 7FB7EE20 7FADEE20 C400

Press F12 for boot menu.

F1  pfSense
F5  Drive 1

F6 PXE
Boot:  F1

stephenw10

If it's showing anything on the console it's not the CPU issue.

It looks like it sees the boot device and is loading the boot loader but never and actually tries to load the kernel if that's all that ever shows.

I would just reinstall clean from there if you have a config backup. Open a ticket to get the image:
https://www.netgate.com/tac-support-request

Steve