Fresh Install Failing

tmatthews14

This has been an all day project for me and I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong.

I upgraded my 2.2.6 box to 2.3 and immediately saw performance issues. I'm running in on a Netgate FW-7541D that should be plenty for use at my house and the performance issues became too frustrating I decided to use the Factory Restore option under the Diagnostics tab. The FR broke everything and now I'm looking at a clean install. Here's what I've tried…

Pulled the SSD from the Netgate and used a```
dd if=/pfsense2.3-serial-memstick-amd64.img of=/dev/sdb bs=1M


I'm then greeted with a:

An internal Lua error occurred while trying to run the script /usr/local/share/dfuibe_lua/easy_install/main.lua:


If I make my way through a custom install, format the disk, create a partition, install bootblocks, etc… I'm greeted with the same error.

2) I've tried formatting the SSD and created a physical memstick to boot from.  When doing that I'm greeted with the familiar```
set kern.cam.boot_delay="10000"
```that once I've added that and boot I get an Error 19.

Either way, I just want to install PfSense again.  Am I doing something wrong? From what I read on [https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Full_install_on_Netgate_Hamakua#In_another_system](https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Full_install_on_Netgate_Hamakua#In_another_system) I should be able to just flash the image with another system and throw it in and not have the problems I'm seeing.  Anyone have any ideas?

tmatthews14

bump

vbentley

I am not familiar with your hardware but I wonder if the problem has something to do with your SSD.
For the purpose of eliminating it as the cause of the problem, try installing on a conventional hard drive instead.
If the installation fails on the hard drive as well you at will least have some confidence that the SSD is good.
If the hard drive install works then it could be a hardware fault, SSD preparation fault, or some software incompatibility with the new kernel and modules in FreeBSD 10.3 and your SSD.

tmatthews14

I've got another SSD I could try. I'll give that a shot and if that doesn't work I've also got another HDD I can throw in there. Thank you for the reply, I'll try that tomorrow and report back.

heper

afaik the serial memstick is supposed to be written to a usb drive. then boot the usbdrive & install to the ssd

the installer partitions & formats the disk. seems impossible to boot & install from the same media.

cmb

@heper:

afaik the serial memstick is supposed to be written to a usb drive. then boot the usbdrive & install to the ssd

the installer partitions & formats the disk. seems impossible to boot & install from the same media.

Yes, need to write that to something other than your target installation drive.

If it's a 7541 with SSD, then write the serial memstick to USB flash, boot from that, and do the install.

tmatthews14

Alright, I had to open up a support ticket to get a resolution to this problem. A couple things I wanted to share in case someone else stumbles upon this post with the same problems:

I had to move my installation to a spare computer, the 7541 never worked for me as installation hardware.
The support guy said that they've seen issues with the / drive being larger than 4GB so he had me resize that and add the rest of the drive capacity to /usr.
Serial output is disabled in the standard kernel and I had to use the embedded kernel.
Netgate's old documentation stated that LAN was port 5 and WAN was port 6…. after a fresh install with embedded kernel and the ability to console again we found that not to be true.

These 4 adjustments finally made it work and I'm back up and running. Hopefully this will help somebody else in the future.