Won't Boot

[weswitt]

I''ve been running pfSense for a few years and I would now like to move to opnSense. So I downloaded the latest 19.7 release, installed into a USB thumb drive and attempted to boot it on my firewall hardware. No joy. The system boots off the USB drive, loads the kernel modules and then displays the blue "booting" message. At this point the system hangs and makes no further progress.

My hardware is the QOTOM-Q190G4-S02. Again this hardware runs the latest pfSense perfectly. This is an Intel J1900 x86 system that I would think is perfectly acceptable.

Is this a known bug? Are there required BIOS changes necessary?

[mimugmail]

Can you try a different USB stick and/or 19.1 IMG? Normally this should work. Most of the times the image was not correctly written to the stick.

[unipacket]

Hi

I had a similar issue and used the steps benibilme posted here to resolve the issue.  Not 100% sure it will resolve your issue but thought I would share.

https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?topic=11869.msg54600#msg54600

I've also seen franco mention that this fix can be done in the web GUI so after the initial install, you may be able to make it permanent using the GUI instead of editing the config file.

https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?topic=11400.msg51560#msg51560

[weswitt]

thanks unipacket, that seems like the *EXACT* problem I'm having. So I need to modify the /boot/loader.conf file on the bootable USB thumb drive. I've tried to do that but I cannot seem to mount the boot partition. When I try to mount the boot partition in Linux I get "wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb2, missing codepage or helper program, or other error". When I try to mount the boot partition in FreeBSD I get the error: "error = 5".

What is the right way to mount the boot partition?

[unipacket]

I did not modify the boot image itself.  I just followed the steps outlined in the other thread: boot the ISO (or USB image) and when the boot options menu appeared, pressed the space bar to stop the count down timer.  Then I  selected option three to set boot options and entered the following (pressing enter after each line):

set kern.vty=sc
boot

The installation wizard was then able to run.  Once the installation completed, I removed the ISO and rebooted.  When the boot options menu appeared again, I entered the lines above to allow Opnsense to boot.  From there, I ssh-ed into the box and modified the config mentioned in the first thread I linked.  I mentioned the second thread because franco made it seem like you could apply the same fix via the GUI instead of ssh-ing in and editing the config file.  I found franco's suggestion afterwards so I cannot comment on if it works or not but would suggest trying that first since it's easier to apply.

Hope this helps, keep us posted 

[weswitt]

thanks so much for the help. i have 19.7 opnsense installed, configured and running.

[unipacket]

Glad to hear.  Hope everything continues to run smoothly for you!