OPNsense install from a USB key

[bogi]

Sorry for that previous incoherent mess of post.  Too many beers and being up late doesn't make for good writing.

I'd like to see OPNsense be able to come up with a more "fool proof" installer.  I'm a user of FreePBX (Linux IP Phone Server) and with their latest Release Candidate they have released a hybrid iso that allows for writing to CD/DVD or USB from the same .iso file.  If the OPNsense team has the resources to find out how FreePBX was a to able to do create this hybrid iso maybe OPNsense can also create this same type of hybrid .iso file.

Does OPNsense have any friends in the FreePBX team to talk to on how they did this?

[bogi]

I did not check to see how compatible the hybrid .iso files are with UEFI.  So that might be a showstopper.

[smoore]

I gave up on OPNsense. Everything seems an uphill battle. Should be named "Sisyphus". Perhaps I'll try a future version. I miss the m0n0wall days, I ran it for a decade, rebooting only for updates, sometimes for years between. It's nice to see uptime counters of 600 days. Screenshot attached of final power-down.

[shaqan]

https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/ Win32 Disk Imager.

Works for me.

pfSense, OPNSense, OpenSUSE, Kubuntu and so forth.. if it's using img file or "hybrid" iso it's the go-to program.

[M4DM4NZ]

Just spent half my day trying to Install from a USB drive with no luck,

Used Rufus, Win32Diskimager using the OPNsense-17.1.4-OpenSSL-cdrom-amd64.iso
and OPNsense-17.1.4-OpenSSL-vga-amd64.img STILL DIDNT WORK!!

Even tried using YUMMI

Ended up using imgburn to burn the ISO to a DVD then installed via an external USB DVD drive.


That worked!

My opnsense PC is a Intel NUC

[csmall]

Try physdiskwrite. All the others failed for me but it worked great.

[abraxxa]

I remember I had a hard time choosing the correct image when installing OPNsense for the first time myself as usually the CDROM images can be written to USB stick as well which isn't the case here (for whatever reason, FreeBSD?).

As the installation with a USB stick is the #1 method these days I'd suggest renaming the images to at least also include the word 'usb' in addition to 'vga' and 'serial'.

'vga' is a bit misleading too in the days of UEFI.

When I reinstalled by box due to a different SSD last week I struggled with the installation of 17.1.0. It was the day when 17.1.4 was released but the install images didn't exist. The UEFI seems to cause that a different screen output is displayed then documented, there was no choice between installing and live boot, I had to login with an 'installer' user instead.

[franco]

Hi all,

Okay, let's please wrap this up.

For Rufus read here.... https://github.com/pbatard/rufus/issues/809

The maintainer rightfully blames FreeBSD for not supporting FAT, but the train of thought goes wrong by saying that what Linux does is right in supporting FAT structures to accommodate for a conversion. Note that the IMG files work fine, but the ISO in any foreseeable future will not.

Here's the kicker. It's not a real problem. We have the ISO and the IMG, it's just the convenience of not being able to do what everybody else (yes, sure, that's a false assumption, but let's go with it) does.

We can document this better, but if you read this thread carefully there is nothing OPNsense can do to amend this.

The issue goes further with the (also convenient, it's a pattern) hybrid ISO boots, which are next to impossible to run. I spent two hours just now to find and review the binary tools, they basically require syslinux images with extra trickery or large chains of non-BSD software installations. PCBSD (TrueOS) must have once used hybrid ISOs through Xorriso, but I couldn't find notes that they still do, but I could be wrong. Their current download site at least offers an ISO and IMG, so they may have reverted back to that.

As for naming, we shall move CDROM to DVD to make it more clear that it is likely oversize. It's unfortunate, but impossible to shrink without removing a larger piece of functionality like the proxy from the installer media, which the system is not ready to cope with just yet.

As for VGA vs. UEFI: sure, it's misleading, but we also shouldn't rename images for every release, or should we? There are READMEs, install guides and release notes. It's very easy to update those, if we could shift focus there instead of trying to do something with the images to increase their cross-compatibility?

Yes, there are clearly problems, but we cannot end on a note that OPNsense, or FreeBSD or BSD for that metter gets this totally wrong and/or that something can be done, whilst I'm doing all I can for the last two years and nobody else wrote code (this is true) in this area to improve our situation. One has to assume that (a) I suck, (b) nobody cares, or (c) there is not a lot that can be done without spending an inappropriate amount of time on a problem that exists through implication alone.

We do what we can with the tools that we have. It's unfortunate that BSD isn't as cool as Linux, maybe never will be, but let's stick to the facts and start improve the documentation. We do provide "cross-platform compatibility" (this is a weird concept for a fixed sequence of bytes) with the image files, but not in the way that new users coming from Windows or Linux would expect it.


Cheers,
Franco

[phoenix]

Hi Franco

I'm not sure that anything for the release of img/iso etc. files needs to be changed. If it's difficult to understand which version is needed by a new user then my suggestion would be a download page similar to the on on the web site of the project form which OPNsense was forked. It's simple, you have to choose the version you need and it explains what the versions are for. Would a page l8ike that be somewhat better than just have a list of file types to download?

.... and, of course, thanks for all your work (and everyone involved) on this project.

[franco]

Hi Bill,

That's a sensible suggestion. I'll forward it right away. It would solve a lot of issues by moving all relevant info into one single page as a "clever" web application, even things like checksums, readme notes, etc.

BTW, the CDROM -> DVD move: https://github.com/opnsense/tools/commit/6797a9f5c86

Nothing changes here except the name, levelling expectations.


Thanks,
Franco

[phoenix]

Hi Bill,

That's a sensible suggestion. I'll forward it right away. It would solve a lot of issues by moving all relevant info into one single page as a "clever" web application, even things like checksums, readme notes, etc.

I find that always helps, even if people don't read it (and I know a lot don't) it's just an easy place to point them to for the information they need. I think whatever makes it easier for you guys is a good.

BTW, the CDROM -> DVD move: https://github.com/opnsense/tools/commit/6797a9f5c86

Nothing changes here except the name, levelling expectations.

Thanks for that link, I didn't have time to read it earlier as I was just on my way out  - it looks like a good idea.