"External config loader" not loading config.xml from USB at boot

[nwholloway]

I was trialling booting pfSense (embedded) with the config.xml on a USB stick to restore the configuration.  I was seeing the "External config loader 1.0 is now starting…", but no other output (even when I enabled debug).

I suspect the problem is the "get_disk_slices" function in "etc/ecl.php".

$slices = trim(exec("/bin/ls " . escapeshellarg("/dev/" . $disk . "s*") . " 2>/dev/null"));

The command passed to exec ends up being

/bin/ls '/dev/da1s*'

Due to the quoting of the wildcard, no slices are returned, so none are mounted to check for config.xml.

This looks as if this was inadvertently broken in 2014 [873c1701] – so I suspect this functionality isn't highly depended on.

Should I submit this to the pfSense bugtracker?

Nick