OPNsense-23.7-serial-amd64.img seems broken

[m00k00]

Trying to install the image on a DEC740 via serial console I'm facing the issue that OPNsense will not successfully boot into the live environment. I'm flashing the USB Stick on Ubuntu 23.04 via:

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sudo dd if=OPNsense-23.7-serial-amd64.img of=/dev/sdd bs=16k

Once I insert it into the DEC740 I'm receiving the following message:

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umass0 on uhub0
umass0: <SanDisk Ultra, class 0/0, rev 3.00/1.00, addr 1> on usbus0
umass0:  SCSI over Bulk-Only; quirks = 0x4001
umass0:0:0: Attached to scbus0
da0 at umass-sim0 bus 0 scbus0 target 0 lun 0
da0: <SanDisk Ultra 1.00> Removable Direct Access SPC-4 SCSI device
da0: Serial Number 04012dd12715b79df2d990b393519e866ebc745e2ed103861dcbbcdefb62
da0: 400.000MB/s transfers
da0: 238848MB (489160704 512 byte sectors)
da0: quirks=0x2<NO_6_BYTE>
GEOM: da0: the secondary GPT table is corrupt or invalid.
GEOM: da0: using the primary only -- recovery suggested.


I've also tried to capture as much of the boot log as possible via the serial console interface and attached it to this post.

After doing some further research I was able to pin the problem down to OPNsense-23.7-serial-amd64.img specifically, as neither OPNsense-22.7-OpenSSL-serial-amd64.img nor OPNsense-23.1-OpenSSL-serial-amd64.img are producing the same issue :)

Of course I also followed closely all the steps provided at https://docs.opnsense.org/manual/install.html#download-and-verification and made sure the image I've got is valid. I even downloaded it from another mirror, just to be super sure.

For the moment I will settle with 23.1 and update via the web interface, but surely it would be nice if future releases could have this fixed.

If I can help by providing any further information, just let me know. Happy to assist any time!

[Edit]
Just to make sure we are on the same page: I also ruled out the USB Stick by trying 3 different ones and they would all yield exactly the same results!

[newsense]

Did you try a USB2 stick ?

[m00k00]

Yes, I did. However, it didn't matter: 23.7 isn't working on a USB2 and USB3 Stick, while 23.1 worked on both.

[doktornotor]

Do you mean this image?

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SHA256 (OPNsense-23.7-serial-amd64.img.bz2) = 03c774f53520414c73cdcaa4fe3b34c4165395963bef74c533c3878a07b80138


Well, that's what I used for installing OPNsense on multiple APUx boxes... Perhaps try with something else than Ubuntu 23. Works and boots just fine when flashed with Etcher: https://etcher.balena.io/

Or, something like:

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dd if=OPNsense-23.7-serial-amd64.img of=/dev/sdb bs=16k status=progress conv=fsync

[m00k00]

Thanks for letting me know that it worked for you. That was really helpful and kicked off further investigations on my side and I finally figured out what's wrong. I used the archive manager "Ark" to unpack the .bz2 files. For some reason that I fail to understand at the moment this resulted in a corrupted .img for 23.7. However, it works fine for the other versions. I've been able to successfully finish the installation by unpacking the .bz2 like suggested in the manual via:

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bzip2 -d OPNsense-<filename>.bz2

I'm using Ark 22.12.3, btw. Will try to reproduce this on another machine, but it could take some time, as I'd need to upgrade another machine to Ubuntu 23.04, first. As you can imagine,  that's not a priority on my list ... at least not until I worked out my OPNsense setup  ;)

Thanks again for helping me in pin-pointing this issue, appreciated!

[doktornotor]

Thanks for the follow up. I'd say it'd make more sense to publish the checksums (also) for the unpacked images, exactly for cases like this.

[m00k00]

Exactly my thoughts. Would definitely make things like that easier to spot  :)

[doktornotor]

Created a (completely untested) pull request here: https://github.com/opnsense/tools/pull/386, subscribe there if you want to discuss.