Pfsense on XTM510

[michieru]

Having trouble getting Pfsense to boot on a XTM510….

I downloaded the 4G.img.gz file from the mirrors and used the guide in the wiki to get the compressed image file into a 4GB CF card (Kingston) for this little project. After I replaced the CF card the BIOS detects the new card however Pfsense won't boot after that.

When I got the CF card I proceeded with the following:

diskpart

select disk 1 (CF card)

clean

Then used physdiskwrite to place pfSense into the CF card using the following command:

physdiskwrite -u -d 1 /sourceofimage/4G.img.gz

If I am missing something here please let me know or point me in the right direction for a better guide.

Thank you.

[doktornotor]

@michieru:

Then used physdiskwrite to place pfSense into the CF card using the following command:
physdiskwrite -u -d 1 /sourceofimage/4G.img.gz

Did this complete at all? Never worked for me. Always has to unpack (gunzip) the IMG first before using physdiskwrite, otherwise it writes a couple of sectors and plain fails.

[phil.davis]

I just made one direct from the gz file. start a command prompt with administrator privs and:

D:\pfsense> diskpart
DISKPART> list disk

  Disk ###  Status         Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt
  --------  -------------  -------  -------  ---  ---
  Disk 0    Online          232 GB  1024 KB
  Disk 1    No Media           0 B      0 B
  Disk 2    No Media           0 B      0 B
  Disk 3    Online         1907 MB    10 MB

DISKPART> select disk 3

Disk 3 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> clean

DiskPart succeeded in cleaning the disk.

DISKPART> exit

Leaving DiskPart...

D:\pfSense>physdiskwrite.exe -u pfSense-2.1-RC1-2g-i386-nanobsd_vga-20130801-1903.img.gz

physdiskwrite v0.5.2 by Manuel Kasper <mk@neon1.net>

Searching for physical drives...

Information for \\.\PhysicalDrive0:
   Windows:       cyl: 30401
                  tpc: 255
                  spt: 63
Information for \\.\PhysicalDrive1:
DeviceIoControl() failed on \\.\PhysicalDrive1.

Information for \\.\PhysicalDrive2:
DeviceIoControl() failed on \\.\PhysicalDrive2.

Information for \\.\PhysicalDrive3:
   Windows:       cyl: 243
                  tpc: 255
                  spt: 63

Which disk do you want to write? (0..3) 3
About to overwrite the contents of disk 3 with new data. Proceed? (y/n) y
Found compressed image file
1989969408/1989969408 bytes written in total

D:\pfSense></mk@neon1.net>

This is using a USB CF card reader/writer on a Windows7 laptop. The "-d n" parameter should work also, I just like to see all the disk info interactively and pick the correct one.

[stephenw10]

The XTM510 is one of the older XTM5 models and as such it should just boot. It may have a newer bios that restricts what it can boot but we've not seen any reports of that. When the box powers on what colour is the arm/disarm LED?
Make sure you are downloading the correct image (not the VGA image). Try using the 2GB image, your card may be too small for the 4GB image even if it claims to be 4GB.

Steve

[michieru]

So after BIOS boot I restarted the PUTTY session and changed the baud rate to 9600 with Flow control XON/XOFF. Pfsense was booting however I was believing that it wasn't because the session appeared dead right after…

I have configured the interfaces and will attempt to make a video explaining the process that even a idiot like me can understand. Thanks for the responses and it's running 4G version on 2.0.3. :-)

[stephenw10]

Nice.  :)
Feel free to suggest any improvements to the firebox wiki page in this thread:
http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,59821.0.html

Steve