USB CD drive install problems

[amrogers3]

Has anyone encountered any problems installing pfsense using a external USB CD drive?

I am getting invalid mount errors.

[wallabybob]

@amrogers3:

Has anyone encountered any problems installing pfsense using a external USB CD drive?

I haven't had any problems with my USB CD drive. I suspect if you search the forums for USB CD you will turn up some problem reports and suggestions.

[ptt]

Also you can try with "pfSense-memstick"

• Download your desired version, ex. "pfSense-memstick-2.0-RC3-i386-20110702-2208.img.gz"
• Extract the "pfSense-memstick.IMG"
• Write to a pendrive using "physdiskwrite"  ( im using a 2Gb pendrive and works fine ) http://m0n0.ch/wall/physdiskwrite.php
• Boot with your created pendrive
• When prompted, choose " boot pfSense using USB device " ( press 3 )

[amrogers3]

@wallabybob:

@amrogers3:

Has anyone encountered any problems installing pfsense using a external USB CD drive?

I haven't had any problems with my USB CD drive. I suspect if you search the forums for USB CD you will turn up some problem reports and suggestions.

What brand/model you using? I am having trouble with an ASUS usb drive I just purchased from newegg.

[wallabybob]

One identifies as a TEAC CD-224E
Another identifies as SAMSUNG  CD-ROM SN-124

I bought both of these on Ebay.

A couple of years ago I had trouble with some USB adapters for notebook drives. They would work with newer versions of Linux and Windows but not older versions. I found in Linux a table to accommodate "quirks" of certain USB mass storage adapters. The Linux table was far more extensive than the FreeBSD table. Perhaps you have a "quirky" drive that FreeBSD doesn't know how to accommodate. If you care about that you could try it on a FreeBSD 8.1 system.

Another installation option I have used is to put the hard drive in another system (even a virtual machine), boot the CD there and install to the hard drive. If using the virtual machine option that can take advantage of the host OS's knowledge of quirks of the CD drive. Once the installation is complete, put the hard drive in the real target system and boot. You will almost certainly need to reconfigure the network interfaces in the target system but once that is done you don't need to do it again. If you want to pursue that option and aren't sure give me details of what you have available and I'll give some further suggestions.

[cmb]

Many times need to use the "boot from USB" option at the first boot menu you see with USB CD/DVD drives.