Prepare a USB Memstick¶
Warning
Be extremely careful when writing pfSense® disk images! If the client PC contains other hard drives it is possible to select the wrong drive and overwrite a portion of that drive with the installer disk. This renders the disk completely unreadable except to certain disk recovery programs, if at all.
Connect the USB Memstick to the Workstation¶
Start by connecting the USB memstick to the workstation containing the installation media image.
Locate the device name that the client PC designates for the drive. The device varies by platform, here are a few examples:
Linux:
/dev/sdX
whereX
is a lowercase letter. Look for messages about the drive attaching in the system log files or by runningdmesg
.FreeBSD:
/dev/daX
whereX
is a decimal digit. Look for messages about the drive attaching in the system log files or by runningdmesg
.Windows: the drive will be named after a single uppercase letter, e.g.
D
. Use Explorer or examine the system control panel and look at the available disks for one matching the drive.On Mac OS X:
/dev/diskX
whereX
is a decimal digit. Rundiskutil list
from a command prompt or use the GUI tool Disk Utility.Note
On Mac OS X, if the disk is named
diskX
then the device to pass to the writing utility is actuallyrdiskX
which is must faster for these types of low-level operations.
Note
Also make sure the device name refers device itself rather than a
partition on the device. For example, /dev/sdb1
on Linux is the first
partition on the disk, so it would be writing to a partition on the device
and the drive may not end up being bootable. In that case use /dev/sdb
instead so the disk image utility writes to the entire disk.
Cleaning the USB Memstick¶
This step is optional unless the image fails to write to the USB memstick.
The target drive may already contain partitions which can prevent it from being written properly by disk image tools. To get a fresh start, wipe all of the partitions from the disk. This can be done a few different ways in Windows or in UNIX.
Windows¶
The Disk Management interface in Windows is one way to delete the partitions
from a disk but often it has the operation disabled. The simplest and most
reliable method is to use diskpart
.
Start a command prompt (
cmd.exe
) as AdministratorRun
diskpart
Enter
list disk
to show the disks connected to the client PCLocate the target USB memstick in the list and note its disk number
Enter
select disk n
wheren
is the disk number of the target USB memstick from the list in the previous command outputEnter
clean
to remove the partitions from the diskEnter
exit
to stopdiskpart
and return to a command promptEnter
exit
again to close the command prompt window
Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X¶
The dd
command is the easiest way to erase the partition table from the USB
memstick on UNIX and UNIX-like operating systems such as Linux, FreeBSD, and OS
X.
$ sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=memstick_disk_path bs=1M count=1
Replace memstick_disk_path
with the path to the memstick disk device, e.g.
/dev/sdb
, /dev/da1
, or /dev/rdisk3
.
Write the Image¶
Now it is time to write the image to the USB memstick. The exact procedure varies by operating system.
Note
The following instructions assume the installation media image file has been decompressed by an appropriate utility first. For details, see Decompress the Installation Media.
Warning
The operations in this section will completely overwrite any existing content on the USB Memstick! Check the USB memstick first for any files to save or backup.
Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X¶
On Linux, FreeBSD and Mac OSX, write the image to the drive using the dd
command. It takes this general form:
dd if=image_file_name of=usb_disk_device_name
Writing to the disk in this way generally requires elevated privileges, so the
user writing the image will most likely need to use sudo
to run the command.
Example dd
disk writing commands:
Linux:
sudo dd if=pfSense-CE-memstick-ADI-2.4.4-RELEASE-p3-amd64.img of=/dev/sdb bs=4M
FreeBSD:
sudo dd if=pfSense-CE-memstick-ADI-2.4.4-RELEASE-p3-amd64.img of=/dev/da1 bs=4m
Mac OSX:
sudo dd if=pfSense-CE-memstick-ADI-2.4.4-RELEASE-p3-amd64.img of=/dev/rdisk3 bs=4m
The bs=X
parameter is optional and tells dd
to perform reads and writes
on 4 MB blocks of data at a time. The default block size used by dd
is 512
bytes. Specifying a larger block size can significantly increase the writing
speed.
Windows¶
In order to write an image to a drive from a Windows workstation, use a GUI tool
such as Win32 Disk Imager or Rufus. The same Linux dd
command listed
above can also be used from within Cygwin if the Cygwin command prompt is
launched as an Administrator-level user.
Win32 Disk Imager¶
Download and install Win32 Disk Imager
Start Win32 Disk Imager as Administrator
Click the folder icon
Navigate to the location of the decompressed installation media image
Select the image
Choose the target USB memstick drive from the Device drop-down
Click Write
Wait for the image to finish writing
Rufus¶
Download and install Rufus
Start Rufus as Administrator
Choose the target USB memstick drive from the Device drop-down
Select DD Image from the drop-down next to Create bootable disk using
Click the CD-ROM icon next to Create bootable disk using
Navigate to the location of the decompressed installation media image
Select the image
Click Start
Wait for the image to finish writing
Troubleshooting¶
If writing the disk fails, especially on Windows, clean the USB memstick as suggested in Cleaning the USB Memstick then try again. If it still fails, try a different USB memstick.