Alix 2D3 Can't boot pfSense-1.2.3

[pkleanthous]

Hi I just took my Alix 2D3 board and a new 8 GB CF card. It comes with the latest firmware v0.99h.

I'm a mac user and I have one usb card reader connected to my mac.

I use the command "dd if=pfSense-1.2.3-RELEASE-4g-nanobsd.img of=/dev/disk1 bs=16k"

to write the image to the card.

But it doesn't boot

the output massage after powering up the alix is

PC Engines ALIX.2 v0.99h
640 KB Base Memory
261120 KB Extended Memory

01F0 Master 044A CF 8GB
Phys C/H/S 15538/16/63 Log C/H/S 974/255/63 LBA

and it stops there.

Any ides ?

p.s. I tried to download again the image and write it but I have the same problem.

[jimp]

First, your serial port should be set for 9600. Go into the ALIX BIOS (press 's' during the memory test) and set the speed to 9600 and set your serial client to match. Try to boot again, if it's still not right, then something must be wrong with the CF or how it was written.

You're sure you decompressed that image first before writing? And you're sure it's disk1?

Usually the command looks more like:

gzcat pfSense-1.2.3-RELEASE-4g-nanobsd.img.gz | dd of=/dev/disk3 bs=16k

It's possible that the CF is defective, but unlikely. If even the first part of the CF was written correctly, you should have gotten the pfSense boot menu with an F1/F2 choice.