[Solved - Indirectly] Version 21.7.1 Installation Difficulties

[bryanvh]

Hi all! I'm new to the OPNsense world and would love to give it a shot to take over from pfSense. So, apologies if this turns out to be a dumb question or a 'Layer 8' issue. I've been at this for a couple weeks and have only gotten more confused along the way.


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   Overview
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The core issue I'm having is that both the OPNsense installation media and the OPNsense OS seem to be extremely difficult to get created correctly. Creating USB installation media has only been successful once despite the string of commands being straightforward. And, naturally, the one time I got the OS to install on a drive, it has significant difficulty booting on either the X9 or X10 Supermicro systems I have. (This seems to be something about OPNsense having some trouble with UEFI CSM but I'm not 100% sure or what the solution to that would be. The X10 server looks to be expecting UEFI instead of Legacy or CSM so that seems to shoot a hole in that theory.) Oddly enough, the install behaves fine on a random HP server I have lying around from the same era. This is the same server I originally installed it on since the Supermicro wasn't ready at the time. Furthermore, the OS drive behaves just fine popped into a random Intel motherboard I had lying on a shelf as well as in another random HP server that was lying around.


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   Detailed Troubleshooting
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To retrace my steps and try getting to the bottom of the issues, I went back to the OPNsense download mirrors (https://opnsense.org/download/) and downloaded both the VGA the DVD version. After confirming the integrity of the downloads, I started with the DVD version since it was an ISO and I wanted to see if I could 'cheat' and create media from it on Windows. I tried to decompress the archive with 7-zip and create the usb media with Rufus. I know this isn't per the installation instructions. It was merely to test whether this would work with tools I am more familiar with from Windows administration. It did not work. 7-zip was not handling the bz2 archive like I expected. So, I copied the bz2 archive over to a linux computer and used bunzip2 to decompress the archive to the iso there. Out of curiosity, I copied the decompressed iso file back to Windows to see if Rufus would take that to make an installation usb but it said that there wasn't a boot-able image found. (So I guess it's worth a question, am I doing something wrong there or is the OPNsense iso just not something rufus or Windows will handle well?) Going back to the linux VM, I used the dd command to create an installation usb from the decompressed iso file. This is definitely something else odd. The DVD download is a compressed ISO but the dd commands all reference creating media from a .img file. I don't know where the disconnect is coming from. But, it definitely renders that attempt at boot media ineffective.

Trying again from the VGA download, I stuck to Linux and followed the same path. Bunzip2 to decompress then dd to create an installation usb from the .img file that pops out. This at least creates UEFI installation media which my server recognizes. However, it begins to initialize but fails after a few seconds saying "Failed to find bootable partition" and "Failed to start image provided by UFS (14)onds". A quick google search reveals that this error means FreeBSD is having trouble with the EFI partition and a common thread seems to be MBR vs GPT issues. I'm no stranger to MBR and GPT and how they're intertwined with BIOS and UEFI, respectively. I checked the install usb back on the linux computer using fdisk and gdisk. It says that it found a GPT with a protective MBR. I did find some instructions on how to use gdisk to add a new GPT partition table, rebuild grub, etc. However, that seems to really be getting into the weeds when my assumption would be that the dd command would just take what the .img has and then build the installation media correctly based on that.

Unfortunately, it's been a couple weeks of troubleshooting and I've recreated installation media so many times that I can't 100% recall what version I used when I originally got OPNsense to install to a drive correctly. From my own breadcrumbs, I think it was the VGA version that I successfully setup onto a USB and then installed. However, once it's installed, that shouldn't matter. I have read in other forum posts from years back and for previous versions of OPNsense that it can be really particular about UEFI vs BIOS. Understanding this better might yield some insight into why it seems to not like some systems while it's fine on others. It might be a CSM issue but I'm not well versed enough in OPNsense and its inner workings to come to any conclusions there. The OPNsense OS is perfectly happy booting in those couple HP servers as well as on a random Intel desktop motherboard. It doesn't seem to like booting in either supermicro server I have. The X10 server is set for UEFI boot only so I'm not sure what the issue there would be. The X9 might have something with CSM going on but that's unclear. Is there a way to create a legacy installer for OPNsense to test this? Does the 21.7.1 OPNsense installer create a UEFI-only image, causing issues with CSM?


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   Key Questions
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Why does creating USB installation media from the OPNsense downloads result in so many issues? (Presumably, this is either me missing something or some other procedural issue I'm not catching.)

Is it possible to create a USB installer for OPNsense using Windows tools like Rufus? (I'll admit that I'm not as well versed in this on the Linux side of shop as I've just had more practice with this in Windows.)

Could someone explain in better detail what issues OPNsense can run into with UEFI CSM or does anyone have any insight into what might be keeping the OS from loading on these supermicro servers while it is perfectly happy in random other boards that are sometimes even older? (All of the BIOS settings look to be in place for UEFI OS support. Both the X9 and X10 generations of motherboards are supposed to support UEFI. X10 is new enough that UEFI is the default and is actually the newest board out of all the ones the OPNsense installation was tested in.)

[bryanvh]

All,

I managed to get OPNsense installed through bypassing the stated instructions and fighting it out with Windows a little more.



For anyone that's interested, unpacking the OPNsense iso on Windows and getting it installed from there isn't too bad once you know what tools aren't up to task.


First, 7-zip worked with the bz2 archive. But, the standard 32 bit install needed to be superseded with the 64 bit version in order to handle the archive correctly. Working from a fresh dvd download for OPNsense, I managed a clean decompression this way.

Second, I ditched Rufus in favor of just using IPMI to attach the ISO and install from there. Rufus was having trouble with getting the bootloader partition setup right. Yumi seemed to work better. Switching to IPMI was more of an experiment than anything else.



Overall, it seems that some insufficient utilities introduced more issues and confusion than there needed to be. And, as it turns out, that one 'successful' installation of OPNsense was partially corrupted, causing even more confusion. Finally, it may be worth expanding and clarifying the posted installation instructions both to cover operating in a Windows environment as well as offering a more guided instruction path to better direct new users. The current instructions are detailed but unforgiving in the event that something deviates from the expected result.