[MinnowBoard] Unable to Boot/Install pfSense

[Warren Block]

On Wed, 13 Jul 2016, Domenic DiPasquale wrote:

> Hello,
> I've been trying to set up pfSense on this minnow max for a couple days now and haven't had much progress. I noticed on MinnowBoard's Google+ account that others have had success
> setting up pfSense and was wondering if anyone would be able to help?
> 
> I've downloaded all my AMD64 (64-bit), CD Image Installer (.iso)/USB Memstick Installer (.img) from https://www.pfsense.org/download/ and tried various ways to make them into bootable
> USBs (unetbootin, linux's dd command, etc). Every time I tried making the .img a bootable USB, it becomes unaccessable from any computer and isn't recognized by the bios when I try to
> boot with it. When I made the .iso a bootable USB, I got no error and it was recognized by the bios. Although, I was unable to boot from the USB until I added a boot option to use the
> loader.efi, which finally booted pfSense. Unfortunately, I still get an error after the pfSense menu: 
> 
> >Mounting from cd9660:/dev/iso9660/PFSENSE failed with error 19.
> >
> >Loader variables:
> >    vfs.root.mountffrom=cd9660:/dev/iso9660/PFSENSE
> >    vfs.root.mountffrom.options=ro
> >
> >Manual root filesystem specification:
> >    <fstype>:<device> [options] >        Mount <device> using filesystem <fstype>
> >                       
> >        eg. ufs:/dev/da0s1a
> >              zfs:tank
> >              cd9660:/dev/acd0 ro
> >                   (which is equivalent to: mount -t cd9660 -o ro /dev/acd0 /)
> >
> >    ?                          List valid disk boot devices
> >    .                           Yield 1 second (for background tasks)
> >    <empty line>       Abort manual input
> >
> >mountroot>
> 
> I've tried suggesting all of the devices returned from "?" at the mountroot> in every combination of ufs:/dev/ and cd9660:/dev/, I've tried adding a delay at the loader prompt after the
> pfSense menu:
> 
> >set kern.cam.boot_delay="10000" >boot
> 
> Nothing seems to work and any help/advice would be appreciated, thank you in advance.

I would first try both of these:

kern.cam.boot_delay=10000
kern.cam.scsi_delay=10000

They can be entered by breaking into the boot loader console or more 
permanently in /boot/loader.conf.

Note the "." option above.  Do that a few times, dot and enter.  If USB 
device names are shown while doing that, then it is a USB detection 
thing taking too long.

Error 19 is essentially "device not found".  That device path is created 
when the CD is recognized and the CD label is read.  If USB devices are 
still being enumerated, it has not yet appeared when the loader looks 
for it.

It is possible to take apart that CD image, mounting it and transferring 
files to a USB device that has been formatted and set up to be EFI 
bootable.  As a reference for FreeBSD and UEFI booting:
http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/disksetup.html

Note that most FreeBSD installers have separate CD and USB stick images 
(unlike the single images used by most Linux installers).  Some 
computers will boot from an ISO image on a USB memory stick, but don't 
count on it.

Kind of seems like the pfSense folks would have a UEFI bootable image. 
Might be worth looking at the OPNsense fork, https://opnsense.org/.