opnsense crashing hard on boot (on generic intel hardware)

[lebowski]

I'm trying to run opnsense on an "old" machine, which consists of an intel centrino cpu, i855 chipset, 2gb ram, 4gb cf on storage. When booting, opnsense crashes hard and i cant figure out what is going wrong. I've included a screenshot.

[franco]

Type "bt" + enter.

[lebowski]

When i type bt i get the following:

[lebowski]

I tried this on a different device, got the same weird error. Seems there is something really wrong with the 32bit image. Also i've noticed a second error: it is impossible to boot the 32bit image from usb flash. I tried on three different devices, with multiple usb (a-brand) sticks,  the computer tries to boot, you dont even get to see the btx bootloader, and reboots immediately. I can only boot from (usb) cdrom, but this takes ages (lots of swapping on the drive)

[franco]

I think that the method you use to build the bootable drive has a damaged/incomplete kernel for one reason or another.

I tested i386 images early this week and it works fine.


Cheers,
Franco

[lebowski]

I use rufus to write the images to usb flash drive. The screenshots however are from booting opnsense from usb cdrom, being the iso image, written directly to the optical disk.

I tried the 32bit image on different devices, all with memory and storage tested ok, with only generic intel components.

[lebowski]

I've written the images with win32diskimager, same result. Then, for testing purposes, i tried pfsense 2.3.4 ce memstick image. Wrote this with win32diskimager. Booted directly, showed the btx loader and didnt reboot. No problems there. Seems there is something different with the opnsense bootloader that makes various machines to crash when booting.

After this, it seems even pfsense gets stuck in the booting proces. I'm a right to conclude that it has something to do with the agpgart device? (see screenshot). Again, for testing purposes, i booted knoppix 7.2, runs without problems. (i know knoppix is linux and not bsd  , just wanted to rule out hardware failure)

[lebowski]

Seems there is definitely something wrong with freebsd. I've found an open ticket:

https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=187015#c16

After using these settings, i'm now trying to get opnsense to boot (takes very long from optical drive    )

[lebowski]

This definitely is an error with freebsd on the agp subsystem. After using the agpdisable settings opnsense boots just fine.

[franco]

Ah ok this is odd. And 19.1-BETA doesn't work as well?

https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?topic=10135.0


Cheers,
Franco

[lebowski]

Havent tested it yet, because it is not possible to boot 32bit image over usb flash, and booting from cdrom takes almost a lifetime 

[lebowski]

Just tested the beta image on usb flash drive. This one also refuses to boot, but at least i have an error message this time...