SOLVED Install pfSense on a Dell R200

Mr. Jingles

G'day all peoples lovers of the finest firewall in the world ;D

I wanted to update my experience in the threads below, but there is no reply-button there. Perhaps posts can not be replied to anymore after x time(?)

So in order to help the future noobs like me who may experience the same problem as I had, I am posting here what worked for me.

On my Dell R200 (8GB RAM, Xeon L3360 2,83 Ghz), install from USB hung at 36% with this:

/usr/local/bin/cpdup -vvv -I -o /usr/mnt/usr

This thread:

https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=39120.0

Said to disconnect the ethernet cables during install, but that didn't do anything for me.

However, in this thread:

https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=31907.30

On page 3, there was a suggestion that worked. So I made sure my bios was at the latest (1.4.3, it came with 1.3.0), and then disabling all the CPU-features in bios, then running the install once (it will still hang at 36% during the same step), then running the install again and choosing 'recovery', where it will give an error at the exact point, but at least there it will give the option of skipping that error and move on. Afterwards, I enabled the CPU-settings again.

I am typing this message from that Dell R200 so obviously this did work for me. It does leave me with one question however:

Obviously there was an error in this step:

/usr/local/bin/cpdup -vvv -I -o /usr/mnt/usr

Which the recovery process allowed to skip. But that means 'something' was skipped.

Isn't that a problem somewhere? If something was not done at that step (skipped), shouldn't this be fixed manually, post process?

Bye ;D

awsiemieniec

I have a Dell PowerEdge R400 server as well and run into the same error. I have disabled all "features" within BIOS/Processor and have performed a "skip" on the error (same place as Op) but still the process hangs at 38%:

/usr/local/bin/cpdup -vvv -I -o /usr /mnt/usr

Looking for a solution.

awsiemieniec

My solution was to disable 2 of the 4 cores of the CPU.

Working now.

brasilnut

Is there not a definitive resolution to this issue ?

If this is a BSD issue, perhaps a solution should be found - instead of all of us having to "hack around" to find the fix.

The "READ_BIG HARDWARE" error is also haunting me.

I have been through 4 different PCs, and cannot get past these issues on any of them.

That being said, it seems as though pfSense 2.1 and above are not usable products.

I also have a "pfSense Gold" subscription, and do not have any information on how to escalate this.

Paying $400 minimum for paid support is totally unacceptable.

heper

this is a freebsd 8.x problem … working around it, is not hard. once installed you can turn your cores back on.
imho, nobody will bother to fix ancient bsd releases.

you could try the pf 2.2 beta on freebsd10.1, perhaps they've fixed it there.

Mr. Jingles

@heper:

this is a freebsd 8.x problem … working around it, is not hard. once installed you can turn your cores back on.
imho, nobody will bother to fix ancient bsd releases.

you could try the pf 2.2 beta on freebsd10.1, perhaps they've fixed it there.

;D