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    Introducing Netgate Nexus: Multi-Instance Management at Your Fingertips.

    Installation problems

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved General pfSense Questions
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    • W Offline
      Waqar.UK
      last edited by Waqar.UK

      Hello all,

      I have a 10 gig firewall. On a fresh SSD I could install a copy of Pfsense 2.7.2 (tried 2.81, but it fails to contact your servers even though I have a direct ont to x550 t2 Ethernet connection).
      My initial installation (2.7.2 to 2.8.1 from webgui) corrupted after I powered down from webgui, so I tried to re-install 2.7.2 from a USB flash drive. It gets as far as accepting terms and conditions, then use space bar to select my SSD. Then it says straight away install complete. I know this is wrong. It says a reboot is needed - it says multiple Pfsense installations found, then it says vlans.. click no, a for auto recognition of wan, it accepts this and the same for lan. But no lan is seen. I cannot ping from from option 7 in Console.
      I just want to wipe out all the installations of Pfsense and re-install fresh again, but the install process does not allow me to do that.
      How do I do that?
      I have tried gparted-live-1.8.1-2-amd64.ISO - > to make a bootable drive and wiped out the Pfsense installation and gparted says the drive is clean aka nothing on it, but again another Pfsense installation is there. I am thinking of taking out the SSD, putting it in a USB 3 nvme enclosure and formatting in Windows.
      Will that cause problems for a fresh install?

      I also have the original config file as soon as I upgraded to 2.8.1. So how do I use that to get this installation back to a working set up?

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      • stephenw10S Online
        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
        last edited by

        If you boot the Net Installer you can drop to the command line (Rescue Shell) and wipe the drive from there.
        https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/troubleshooting/multiple-disks.html#clear-the-disk

        But there is also an option in the installer to wipe the disks for you:
        https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/install/install-walkthrough.html#wipe-disks

        W 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • W Offline
          Waqar.UK @stephenw10
          last edited by

          @stephenw10

          Thanks, I will try this soon.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • W Offline
            Waqar.UK @stephenw10
            last edited by

            @stephenw10
            sadly none of these worked

            SteveITSS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • SteveITSS Offline
              SteveITS Rebel Alliance @Waqar.UK
              last edited by

              @Waqar.UK yes you can erase the partitions from anywhere. In gparted did you save the modifications?

              Re restore, https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/backup/restore-during-install.html. If you install 2.7 you will need to upgrade first, though.

              To upgrade, select your branch in System/Update/Update Settings. When upgrading, allow 10-15 minutes to reboot, or more depending on packages, CPU, and/or disk speed.
              Only install packages for your version of pfSense.
              Upvote 👍 helpful posts!

              W 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • W Offline
                Waqar.UK @SteveITS
                last edited by

                @SteveITS

                Hello, yes

                @SteveITS said in Installation problems:

                yes you can erase the partitions from anywhere. In gparted did you save the modifications?
                Yes I did, still same error.

                N 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • N Offline
                  nimrod @Waqar.UK
                  last edited by

                  @Waqar.UK

                  Your drive is probably defective and its dying slowly.

                  W 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • W Offline
                    Waqar.UK @nimrod
                    last edited by

                    @nimrod

                    I finally got it working. took out the drive and put into a Sabrent NVME USB C enclosure. Disk manager in Windows 11 pro could not see the pfsense drive.
                    Used MiniTool partition wizard freeware to remove all partitions and format to FAT 32.
                    Crystaldisk Info said drive is at 100% health. So is not defective and total volume was seen. Just in case I did a full format in Windows 11 and came through fine as tested by Crystaldisk Info 100% health.

                    Installed 2.7.2, I know 2.8.1 is the newest version but at setup it asks for a valid WAN connection, my ISP is Community fibre and am not on CGNAT. Since my connection is DHCP 2.5 Gig symmetrical and have tried in the past and it fails to get a connection to Pfsense servers so I have to use 2.7.2.
                    All my Ethernet interfaces were recognised in Console ( two i226 and 2 x550 ). It was strange that when assigning interfaces it took many tries and eventually all were. I used the x550 for WAN and LAN. Backed up my config file to another computer. Then updated to 2.8.1 in Web GUI.
                    Now I have a working Pfsense firewall. But the install problem with 2.8 is a big headache that I rather not go through. SSD in Pfsense is seen as 100% health.

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