Clean install, computer just reboots.

[jrronimo]

Hello,

I have a Pentium 4 560 (3.6 GHz, HyperThreading) in a computer with 2 GB of RAM and two Intel GB NICs -- one PCI and one PCIe. This machine is to serve as the router for my home network.

I ran a 15.1 version of OpnSense on it originally. That was installed on a CF card via a CF to IDE adapter. That was very, very slow, though, and I was having problems with an update. I have replaced that hard drive with a Western Digital Green drive that I had lying around. 1 TB, I think. (I know it's overkill, but it was literally laying around, haha. Maybe I'll try to figure out how to set up the other 999 GB as web space or a Samba share once I get everything working. :p

I have tried to do a clean install on this machine using the i386/VGA package with OpenSSL from a USB flash drive (the computer has no optical drive at the moment). The install went perfectly fine, but on reboot... it gets to the boot loader and shows "F1 OpnSense", but then the computer reboots after about 3 seconds; no other text is displayed on screen.

Any ideas where I can check to see why this might be happening? I can pull the hard drive and read log files off it, but I am still pretty new to BSD, so I would have no idea where to look.

Thanks in advance!

[franco]

The partition layout on the installed disk does not work with your hardware. For older PCs such as this I recommend embedded m0n0wall derivates like SmallWall or t1n1wall.

We're hope to get the installer more compatible for 16.1, but it is a low priority item as workarounds like the nano image exist.

Nano has had troubles with upgrades in the past. There's a new nano image coming out next week to address issues we still had with the initial 15.7 or the older ones. A test snapshot is here, although it is i386 only:

https://pkg.opnsense.org/snapshots/OPNsense-15.7.9-LibreSSL-nano-i386.img.bz2

More on brand new nano images next week...

[jrronimo]

The partition layout on the installed disk does not work with your hardware. For older PCs such as this I recommend embedded m0n0wall derivates like SmallWall or t1n1wall.

We're hope to get the installer more compatible for 16.1, but it is a low priority item as workarounds like the nano image exist.

Nano has had troubles with upgrades in the past. There's a new nano image coming out next week to address issues we still had with the initial 15.7 or the older ones. A test snapshot is here, although it is i386 only:

https://pkg.opnsense.org/snapshots/OPNsense-15.7.9-LibreSSL-nano-i386.img.bz2

More on brand new nano images next week...

Aww, bummer. I really liked OpnSense when I was using it. I'll definitely check into those other distros though and hope I can come back to this some day. Thanks for the heads up!

What part is causing the incompatibility? The Pentium 4?

[franco]

Probably the BIOS. We're not using gpart, and I think that's causing the issue. What you could do is install a vanilla FreeBSD 10.1 and then bootstrap it using the opnsense tools, similar to:

https://kram3r.wordpress.com/2015/07/09/opnsense-on-digitalocean-droplet/

You'll only need an OPNsense origin.conf for pkgng and issue a few install commands.

[jrronimo]

Interesting! Thank you so much for the info. I got the machine up and running with SmallWall yesterday, though I still think I'd prefer OpnSense in the future. I'll have to save it for a rainy day, though. I think that link will help a lot!

Cheers!