Soekris 4801 Hard Drive Installation
From PFSenseDocs
The following describes how to run pfSense on a SFF IDE hard drive for a Soekris net4801.
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Installation Machine
Since the 4801 cannot have a CD-ROM attached, the installation will have to be run on another machine. Any laptop should work fine, and some USB to SFF IDE adapters may also work. I keep around an old Dell Inspiron 3500 Pentium II laptop for just this purpose.
Put the drive into the installation machine and boot it off of the pfSense live CD.
Assigning Interfaces
When it boots, you will have to assign interfaces even though you need not actually get the installation machine on the network (I generally don't even plug in the NICs).
If you only have one NIC in your installation machine, when prompted "do you want to set up VLANs now", answer 'y'. You will need two interfaces to proceed, and the VLAN interface is the easiest way to satisfy this requirement. Then enter the name of the NIC in your system as the parent interface, and assign it a VLAN tag of any number between 1 and 4094. That will take you back to the "Enter the parent interface" prompt, just hit Enter without any input to continue.
Now you need to assign something to the LAN interface. You either have two interfaces, or a physical interface and a VLAN interface. In my case, I have xl0 and vlan0 interfaces. I enter xl0 for LAN, vlan0 for WAN (it doesn't matter which is which), and just press Enter at the Optional 1 interface prompt. At the "Do you want to proceed" screen, enter 'y'.
Starting the Installation
The interfaces will now be brought up, which will take a while as they aren't plugged in, and the DHCP client on WAN will take some time to timeout. Other steps like synchronizing the system time will also take longer. After a couple minutes or so, depending on the speed of your installation machine, you'll be prompted with the live CD console menu.
Choose Option 99 at the menu to launch the installer, and run the installation as with any hard drive pfSense install.
Proceed normally through the entire installation, and when you get to the screen that asks which kernel to install, choose embedded. This installs the appropriate kernel and ttys file for embedded devices.
Once the installation has finished, let the machine restart, then power it off once it gets back to the BIOS screen.
Transferring the hard drive
Now remove the hard drive from the installation machine, install it in the 4801, and power it up. Attach a null modem cable to the console, and assign interfaces when the console setup menu appears. Then proceed normally as with any installation.
