Need Help Booting Netgate 1100 from USB Drive

madusha

Hello everyone,

I am using a Mac (M1) and currently struggling to get my Netgate 1100 unit to boot from a USB drive, and I could use some advice on how to proceed. Here's a detailed description of where I'm stuck and what I've tried so far:

I am attempting to boot my Netgate 1100 appliance from a USB drive with a fresh pfSense image. Despite setting up the USB and trying to boot from it, the device continues to boot into the existing pfSense installation from the internal storage.

Steps Taken:

Prepared USB Drive: I used balenaEtcher to flash the pfSense image onto my USB drive. I confirmed that the drive is bootable by testing it on another system where it worked fine.
Attempted to Access BIOS/UEFI Settings:

I rebooted the Netgate 1100 and tried accessing the BIOS/UEFI settings to change the boot order. I attempted using keys like Del, F2, and Esc during the boot sequence but did not succeed in entering the BIOS setup.
The system instead loads into the pfSense bootloader menu, offering options like "Boot Multi User", "Escape to loader prompt", etc.

Bootloader Menu:

At the pfSense bootloader menu, I don’t see an option to select the USB drive as the boot device.
The device automatically boots into the existing installation of pfSense.

Current Boot Environment

When I issue the command printenv bootcmd in the Marvell U-Boot command prompt, the output is:

bootcmd=run emmcboot; run scsiboot; run net;

This setup does not mention USB booting, suggesting that the USB boot is not configured in U-Boot.

Questions:

How can I successfully enter the BIOS/UEFI setup on a Netgate 1100? I seem to be missing the correct method or timing to press the setup keys. I am using a Mac by the way.
If direct BIOS access is not possible, how can I modify the U-Boot environment to prioritize USB boot? What exact commands would I need to use to add USB booting to the bootcmd environment variable?

I appreciate any help or insights you can offer on how to resolve this issue. Thank you!

Gertjan

@madusha said in Need Help Booting Netgate 1100 from USB Drive:

I confirmed that the drive is bootable by testing it on another system where it worked fine.

Can you tell more about this other system ?
If it's another "Netgate SG1100", then ok, your drive is fine.
Because : Featuring a Dual-core ARM Cortex-A53 1.2 GHz CPU and that's not a M1, or Intel (or AMD) but an 'ARM' processor.

Can you give us the file name of the file you've written to USB ?

I'm not using a SG1000 myself, but the 'BIOS' of such a device will test USB for connected device, and check if it is a drive type. If its a drive : can it 'activate' or open the drive ?
If its a drive, does it contain a valid bootloader ?
If it contains a valid bootloader (processor type ok, etc), then it will load that bootloader, and booting continues fro there.
If any of these tests fail, the next drive is tested, like the build in emmc, etc.

AFAIK, there is no such thing as bios parameters that you can access and or modify.
The Netgate 1100 was desigend by Netgate.
The pfSense firmware was made by Netgate.
So it should work out of the box.

stephenw10

Yup, that^.

The correct 1100 recovery image will not boot on an x86 device.

To boot the 1100 from USB you need to enter at the Marvell prompt: run usbrecovery

See: https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/solutions/sg-1100/reinstall-pfsense.html

Gertjan

@stephenw10

Which means that valid USB boot drive with the good firmware etc doesn't auto boot except if the admin interrupts the boot process from the console, and types in the command 'run usbrecovery' ....
So, I was wrong. Some manual manipulations are needed then.
https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/solutions/sg-1100/reinstall-pfsense.html is clear about it.