OPNsense 20.1 installation - stuck at USB boot

[sanyarin]

Hi all,

I got this firewall recommended from a friend and now want to install it to an old computer with the following hardware:

Intel Pentium (R) CPU G 645 @ 2,9 GHz, a dual core cpu
RAM:  4 Gigabyte (2 x 2048 MB) of DDR3
HDD: 128GB SSD, fresh from the blister package

I used the newest version of Rufus (3.11) to get the image to my USB stick, physdiskwrite didn't want to do the job. Booting works fine, but when I get to the line where it says "Booting..." , EFI framebuffer etc.., it either hangs or reboots after a few seconds. I tried different sticks to boot from, I tried <set vm.pmap.pti="0"> and another <set vm.> option that I don't remember and can't find :-p

If anyone has an idea, I'm very grateful to try it out. Thanks in advance!

[dinguz]

I have experienced this as well; in my case it came from a bad USB flash drive. Try another one.
Other things to try are:

• reset BIOS to defaults and start from there
• in BIOS, switch SATA operation mode from RAID to AHCI (preferably) or IDE
• update the BIOS of the computer
• use another USB port on the pc, as on older mainboards the USB3 ports (the blue marked ones) may be on another controller than USB2 ports

[l0stnyc]

If what dinguz doesn't work, write the nano version onto a USB drive.  Then run the installer off the USB from shell after it loads.  You can find more instructions below:

Should the installer user not work for any reason, log in as user "installer", select option 8 from the menu and type "opnsense-installer".

https://docs.opnsense.org/manual/install.html

*Edited user to installer

[petersk]

You need to  use the user "installer," not "root."

[l0stnyc]

You're 100% right. 

[sanyarin]

I tried several usb flash drives, now I'm going with a 2GB one and the nano image installer, using a front usb port and that brings me past the error message on the first try! Thank you very much guys!

On a side note: the installer user doesn't work, root does with the password mentioned on the linked website. Now I have to figure out how to properly install :-)