Fresh install of version 2.8 fails to boot
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@stephenw10 said in Fresh install of version 2.8 fails to boot:
Hmm, odd. Most of those Chinese boxes use a pretty generic BIOS with a lot of exposed options.
You never said whether you installed MBR or GPT? Or what the installer selects there by default.
Another thing you can check is boot the installer then drop to the rescue shell and run:
sysctl machdep.bootmethod
That will show you how it's booting when it boots from USB.You could also try that from any booted SSD, including OPN. If it's booting differently there that's almost certainly the problem.
As I mentioned no MBR, legacy, options to select that I could see. AND it worked perfectly before a few months ago and I guaranty I did not play around with bios settings.
I installed whatever your default is on the installer. Like always.
I'll try the other thing in a couple of days.
I completely understand the mbr vs gpt choices. As I said, the loader usb stick always booted perfectly after being built by Rufus using defaults. I used YOUR INSTALLER defaults now and a few months ago when it worked perfectly. With that information you should be able to back into the answer for your question. I'm not going to play gotcha.
I plan to load OPN in a day or two on the same ssd to see if they have a boot problem. If no problem, then it's the pfSense installer. If there's a problem, I'll try another ssd. If there's still a problem then it's the PC. If not a problem with the new ssd, I will again try 2.8.1. If still a problem then it's the installer and how it writes boot tracks.
Then fix the 2.8 error that hides the 2.8.1 available upgrade. Then fix the occasional endless plugin installer problem that happens after the 2.8.1 upgrade.
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As I said the installer itself with boot either. But it uses the detected boot type to select the default filesystem for the install. That is an option in the installer, it's always present. You may need to set it manually if your hardware/BIOS boots USB differently to the SSD.
As as fallback you can always install 2.7.2 from the legacy installer and then upgrade.
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@stephenw10 said in Fresh install of version 2.8 fails to boot:
As I said the installer itself with boot either. But it uses the detected boot type to select the default filesystem for the install. That is an option in the installer, it's always present. You may need to set it manually if your hardware/BIOS boots USB differently to the SSD.
As as fallback you can always install 2.7.2 from the legacy installer and then upgrade.
I will try what I said using OPN. If it works I will learn the new interface. pfSense CE is slowly becoming unstable. See the other 2 bugs for reference. they are small but the length of time they have existed makes me think CE is not a priority.
I used to program long ago and I was an ace debugger of other people's work along with being really good at original projects. The first debug issue was to nail down where it likely exists. I actually stopped to figure out the actual problem rather than run a debugger and trace through it until it ran well enough to walk away from.
MBR vs GPT is not the issue, and if it is then it's still your problem because it never has been a problem before, even with your older installers or with other software. If it is the problem then it's still your problem for apparent lack of interest on making it easy to deal with. Believe it or not, very few users want to make it a serious project to make software work if substitutes are available that don't have similar problems. I'm not going to go to 2.7.2 and upgrade from there. Ridiculous. I would take the ER605 v2 out of storage first. (BTW, I wrote TP-link about a dhcp DNS issue ,they had only 2 selections available for overrides like almost everyone else and I wondered if they could be like pfSense and make more available. I just looked today and down at the device assignment level, you apparently can have a list of servers listed. Unexpected.)
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If there's some bug here I'd love to squash it but I've got nothing to work with so far. I can only guess why it's not booting for you without logs or screenshots.
The closest to what you've described I can replicate is trying to boot using an incompatible method but, I agree, I have no idea why that would have changed in a few months.
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@stephenw10 said in Fresh install of version 2.8 fails to boot:
If there's some bug here I'd love to squash it but I've got nothing to work with so far. I can only guess why it's not booting for you without logs or screenshots.
The closest to what you've described I can replicate is trying to boot using an incompatible method but, I agree, I have no idea why that would have changed in a few months.
Then hand the problem over to someone with a more active imagination. I have written a book here telling you about it. And I suspect the issue would devolve into a gotcha game, like now only more off point.
I'll try to fix it. If I can't then you can feel good about yourself because I didn't say the magic word needed to get you people moving.
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I imagine you're having a bad day and I'm sorry about that.
But I have no way to try to replicate the issue you're seeing.
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@stephenw10 said in Fresh install of version 2.8 fails to boot:
I imagine you're having a bad day and I'm sorry about that.
But I have no way to try to replicate the issue you're seeing.
Thanks for all your hard work on this. I know how hard you tried.
I reinstalled the pfSense ssd back into the offending Chinese box. It continued to fail to boot reliably. Weirdly, it booted into pfSense now every other time or so - no consistent fail or success.
Then I loaded OPNsense from the same thumb drive that earlier held the pfSense installer as a trial to see if it worked perfectly like the OPNsense ssd I just took out.
Then, after it loaded and ran perfectly I rebooted it several times to see if it stayed on point and didn't flake out into that weird shell.
It just keeps running.
And I will keep running it as pfSense CE has become unreliable. I'm using the new setup now to write this and my cell phone via USB adapter is the WAN. In a couple minutes I will reload a backup configuration and then relearn how to side load Adguard Home and reconfigure than from backup as well.
Thanks for all the really great (and I mean it) years of service up to this point. My main router is a different Chinese box and it still runs pfSense with AdGuard Home running in the background. I do not plan to swap it out just yet. But I feel secure having 2 backup routers 1) The OPNsense one I am building now but still have a fully configured ssd in reserve. And 2) an extremely capable TP-Link ER605 V2 combined with a pair of currently running servers holding AdGuard Home.
slight correction: I hadn't switched over the LAN cable to write the above. NOW I am writing from the new config.
Edit a couple of days later: I swapped out the Chinese box running pfSense CE 2.8. with the one mentioned above. The replacement works perfectly. I feel secure knowing updates work without issues and without the need to remove all plugins to minimize the risk of problems. I also like not needing to sideload Adguard Home. (pfBlockerNG was great in its time but the interface is difficult and lacks features. External Adguard Home servers add potential points of failure.) The reinstallation problems also weighed heavily on my decision. The swapped out Chinese box was reloaded to match the one currently running.
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Hmm. Inconsistent booting from the same device without changing anything is even more weird. Hard to imagine what could cause that. Some slight timing variation perhaps. But from an SSD that's unexpected.
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@coffeecup25 FYI...
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@tinfoilmatt said in Fresh install of version 2.8 fails to boot:
@coffeecup25 FYI...
Aren't you the clever one. So smart.
FYI, I'm a terrible typist. And I never get all of my ideas out the first draft. That's that the edit button is for.
Am I supposed to be embarrassed or are you supposed to look smart. Neither is true.
Does your discovery somehow prove something about the issue at hand in your mind? pfSense still did not load right.
And I'm not using it any longer. OPNsense has no issues like the ones I described and it appears more stable given some of the issues that mut be considered during a common, ordinary upgrade. My main router is OPNsense and so is my spare. And the disk holding the last attempt at pfSense was reformatted.
Thanks for giving me the opportunity to make these final points.
