17.1 ISO Issues

[anoncat]

First I know this is a duplicate issue... Seems it get's dropped or ignored. I have looked at the forums for weeks and just now created an account. Coming from a long time pfsense guy making the final switch after reading the release notes on there future plans. Cloud managed agents seem to scare me a little... I'm ok with you knowing I installed your stuff and the hardware it's on. I'm not ok with them leaving the word "agent" in notes as that is an active 2 way in most cases communication. You control things with agents not cool. Cloud = Mainframe, Mainframe = Other anon admin touching my stuff...

But anyway the issue at hand.

Rufus, UNetbootin, Universal USB creator to name a few all fail to create a boot-able usb. The process when it dose run takes 45 minutes. Try win 10, Win 7, Mint, and a live Ubuntu for giggles.

Is there a preferred method and if so on the downloads page can "Use this link" to create the USB be added. Some people have had success but it's a pretty standard load out and should work with any of those.

From a purely 3rd party with very little experience with OPNsense a failed USB creation turns me off pretty quickly as being an unpolished product. I've used v16 before and it wasn't bad, I quickly bailed on it as UPnP wasn't controllable to the way I needed it.

[weust]

In case I missed it, what agent are you talking about?

The USB preparing always feels like an issue with either Linux or FreeBSD.
Last night it took me some time trying Proxmox. Rufus didn't work, but via the Proxmox page for USB installation I got to https://etcher.io/ and that one worked. Maybe it will do for OPNsense as well.

Rufus is less then 1MByte (Using .NET Framework perhaps?) and etcher is a whopping 300MByte.
For writing a file to a USB stick that's plain ridiculous, imo.
But, it worked.

[bartjsmit]

I've never had a bad USB stick from dd on Linux. For a good explanation of the issue, have a look at FlakStapper's post in this thread https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?topic=5121.msg21207#msg21207

Bart...

[weust]

Bart, I missed that topic it seems. Interesting information.

Anoncat, which version/image were you using?

[franco]

I know of two issues:

1. DVD image cannot be used to create an USB stick. This is a limitation of how FreeBSD builds CD/DVD file systems. I am not aware of any progress in FreeBSD.

2. Windows Bug vs. FreeBSD Bug on the VGA USB image, what Bart mentioned just now. This was fixed for 17.7.


Cheers,
Franco

[anoncat]

Special note to self - Opnsense is not packaged the same as most OS deployments. I've gotten use to using the same ISO for a VM deployment as I would for a USB creation. 1 install the rule them all! Not so with Opnsense.

Wesut - 17.1.4 stable iso download. Tried several different download sources. At least the hash was the same on all of them.

Bartjsmit - holy smokes that's a post and a half. Nice find. If I use the disk image style it works you can even be lazy and use the point click method in windows if you so choose. Can't recall the name of the application but it's linked on the downloads page when you grab the OS for a Pie. I've always used the ISO's as more drives tend to be tucked in vs the smaller images at least for history sake it's been that way.

Franco - Think you missed it my bad for not being a little more clear on the subject. PFSense ISO + Rufus = Bootable USB. That's what I'm comparing. OpenBSD 10 + Rufus = Bootable USB. Change the boot to UEFI if your using a machine with it and magic happens. About every ISO for Linux/BSD in the past few years can be moved to a USB for boot.

Guess with OpnSense you need to use the IMG files and write to usb first. Means having two separate installers floating around.

// So the point outside of strange ISO build.

When selecting the drop down on version it would be nice to have a little blurb about how to create a bootable USB. Kind of goes against what some of us old farts are use to and doesn't match standard way of deployment a lot of are use to. 

""Select the image type. Available are Nano for embedded installs, CDROM (requires 90min CD or DVD), Serial (For installation on headless systems) and VGA. Both Serial and VGA are intended for installation using a USB memory stick.""

It isn't a bad explanation on the download site just cumbersome. Fact that a poor sucker like me and seems like a few others based the the link above had to resort to forums to load the OS is a sore spot. Anyone from the original project knows ISO will boot on everything and img is a bit more tailored. Each OS has it's quarks guess IMG only for Opnsense got it. Would love to see the ISO bootable like everything else hint hint devs...

[franco]

Franco - Think you missed it my bad for not being a little more clear on the subject. PFSense ISO + Rufus = Bootable USB. That's what I'm comparing. OpenBSD 10 + Rufus = Bootable USB. Change the boot to UEFI if your using a machine with it and magic happens. About every ISO for Linux/BSD in the past few years can be moved to a USB for boot.

No worries, that's actually what I said: "DVD image cannot be used to create an USB stick. This is a limitation of how FreeBSD builds CD/DVD file systems. I am not aware of any progress in FreeBSD."

The whole image family has been chosen for a couple of reasons.

It's easier to explain which image is which in the README[1] and docs[2], it also helps with troubleshooting.

We've never been able to adequately join the serial image and the vga image, the latter of which only got less portable with UEFI support in amd64. The nano image is totally different. The optional vm images are so diverse that we don't provide them by default, but are freely buildable from the tools that we provide, even with preinstalled sets. Nowadays the ISOs are mostly used for VM installs, when no time or expertise for vm image build is available.

We build OPNsense with what we have in the FreeBSD base system. The goal is to stay close to FreeBSD, with all the good and bad implications in mind.

We will improve the download page during the release of 17.7 next week. I'm sure we find a way to make it clearer why there are the images we have.


Cheers,
Franco

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[1] https://pkg.opnsense.org/releases/17.1.4/README
[2] https://docs.opnsense.org/manual/install.html