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    Does Pfsense install on USB?

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Problems Installing or Upgrading pfSense Software
    4 Posts 3 Posters 4.6k Views
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    • B
      boohoo
      last edited by

      Hello… Currently my pfsense is install on an IDE HDD and I was wondering if I could install from LiveCD to USB Flash drive.?

      I've read somewhere that pfsense didn't support that but its was posted in 2007 and I thought maybe current version supports it.

      if it does support it anyway I can installed pfsense directly from my MAIN PC and Attach to my pfsense server and load settings?

      thank you!

      EDIT:
      I tried using booting it on my freeNAS system (which is currently running on USB key) and it seems like USB Boot and RUN doesn't work it just hangs there.. can anyone confirm?

      I downloaded the (pfSense-1.2.3-RELEASE-2g-nanobsd.img.gz) image onto my 2gig USB flash drive with physdiskwrite and removed freenas (usb) and placed the pfsense (usb) into the socket. Did I do it wrong?

      Since freenas and pfsense derive from monowall... can anyone confirm b/c I plan to purchase a mobo/cpu deal at local computer store!

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      • B
        boohoo
        last edited by

        BUMP! plz!

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        • X
          XIII
          last edited by

          http://www.pfsense.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=45&Itemid=48

          -Chris Stutzman
          Sys0:2.0.1: AMD Sempron 140 @2.7 1024M RAM 100GHD
          Sys1:2.0.1: Intel P4 @2.66 1024M RAM 40GHD
          freedns.afraid.org - Free DNS dynamic DNS subdomain and domain hosting.
          Check out the pfSense Wiki

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          • U
            untermensch
            last edited by

            I have sorta done this,

            1. write embedded image to CF card, try to boot from card in USB to CF card adapter
               got blinking cursor of death.

            2. open CF card with hex editor and replace the first 446 bytes (1BEh) of the
               MBR with the MBR found in /boot/mbr on the freebsd 8.0-RELEASE-i386-bootonly.iso
               CD. that fixed the boot

            I also just tested installing from the pfsense cd to a usb thumb drive
            after install finished and booting from the USB drive, I made it to setup
            network interfaces, so I think it will work.

            EDIT:

            I wrote pfsense 1.2.3 embeded release to the thumb drive, when booting from it
            I got the blinking cursor of death, so I replaced the mbr with the mbr found on
            freebsd 8.0-RELEASE-i386-bootonly.iso /boot/mbr with a hexeditor then I was
            able to boot and get to the config network interfaces screen.

            you can also decompress the embeded image and delete the first 32,256 bytes
            from the image and write it to your drive, which seems to work also.

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