Stuck at boot on ALIX board

voip

Hello PFSense community,

I have just bought a ALIX 2 board and would like to install PFSense, however I can't seem to get this done.

My setup:

ALIX 2 board (PC ENGINES)
4 GB Transcend CF Card
Enclosure Box (CF to SATA)
Null modem Cable with USB adapter

It took me a while to figure things out so here is what I have done.

I've downloaded one of the NEW INSTALL images, to be more specific the version for AMD64, Embedded NanoBSD (CF), Console: SERIAL and 4 GB Card Size.
I have than seen to use my CF Card within the enclosure box.
Wrote the downloaded image onto the CF Card using physdiskwrite

This all seems to work fine and after all bytes are written I can insert the CF Card into my ALIX board. I am connecting to it via Putty using COM3 and 38400 Speed (I just get gibberish if I use other values)

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

01F0 Master 848A TS4GCF133
Phys C/H/S 7769/16/63 Log C/H/S 971/128/63

F1  pfSense
F2  pfSense

F6 PXE
Boot:  F1
|

I wait up to 10 seconds and than the loader (spinner) starts to appear , it makes a few rotations but than remains stuck.
Also there seems to be no avail in using the F1 and F2 keys as I end up seeing ## on my Putty terminal window.

It would be greatly appreciated if someone can help me with this issue and have it working correctly.

Thank you very much and best regards,
David

phil.davis

If it really is an Alix then it is 32-bit only (I accidentally "broke" mine at home yesterday when upgrading to 2.2 - I had pasted in an upgrade URL from a 64-bit system I had just upgraded, and I didn't think!) - you have to use the "i386" image.

Then life should be better.

You might have to switch to 9600 to see the pfSense 2.1.5/FreeBSD 8.3 console output after the BIOS messages . Since you are starting out, and 2.2-RC is out, I would start with a 2.2-RC image - why bother with the old! For 2.2 I think the serial console will default to 115200.

voip

Thank you Mr. Davis. I will see to follow your suggestion this evening and report back directly.

Thanks again and best regards,
David

irfarino

Have a read at this https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Boot_Troubleshooting I had the same problem with my mSata drive. I had to re-install pfsense and I had to uncheck the "packet mode option during boot block" option when I installed it. After that it worked for me.

Cheers!