Boot Troubleshooting

From PFSenseDocs

• If using NanoBSD (1.2.3 or newer) on ALIX hardware, ensure you have the latest BIOS (at least 0.99h) and set CHS mode in the BIOS. See ALIX BIOS Update Procedure for instructions.
• If using an ALIX with VGA (e.g. ALIX 3c3 or 3d3, 1c1, 1d1) set the power management mode to APM in the BIOS.
• If using NanoBSD (1.2.3 or newer) on WRAP hardware, see this: NanoBSD on WRAP
• If the system hangs right after detecting the hard drives, and your floppy drive light is on, turn off floppy support in the bios.
• If the system stops with an error such as:

run_interrupt_driven_hooks: still waiting after 60 seconds for xpt_action

Disable any Firewire/1394 controllers and USB Card Readers in your BIOS.

• If after installation, you get a cannot load kernel error:
  • Make sure BIOS is up to date
  • Reinstall but do not check the packet mode option during boot block installation process
  • Set your HDD mode in BIOS to LBA (don't use "auto", the detected geometry is different if it is set to auto and it fails)
  • Set your HDD mode in BIOS to CHS if the above fails
    • Set AHCI mode in the BIOS
• If the installer fails to start correctly (system reboots), try (try each substep, then rerun the installer each time):
  • Make sure BIOS is up to date
  • Changing the hard drive ribbon cable
  • Forcing a slower speed in the bios for the channel
  • Try running from a shell on the livecd:

# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/ad0 bs=8k count=16
# fdisk -I ad0

(note that ad0 is the first ata hard drive)

• • Try partitioning from a FreeBSD Live CD or Linux *GASP*
  • Different hard drive (last resort)
• If the LiveCD starts to boot but you start to get hundreds of errors, try:
  • Make sure BIOS is up to date
  • Burning the CD at a slower speed
  • Change the CD-Rom Reader ribbon cable
  • Different CD-Rom Reader
• If you are getting a read error during boot, please see this Boot Error.
• If you can boot FreeBSD 7.x but not pfSense, try booting from a FreeBSD 7 Live CD and running the following (More Info):

# fdisk -B -b /boot/boot0 /dev/ad0
# bsdlabel -B /dev/ad0s1

• (note that ad0 is the first ata hard drive)

You can also try to install GAG or Smart BootManager

If all else fails, please visit one of our official support mechanisms listed at pfsense.org and also check out http://wiki.freebsd.org/JeremyChadwick/Commonly_reported_issues