Correction #11399
closed
SG-3100 M.2 Installation Guide Reinstall Corrections
Added by Kris Phillips about 3 years ago.
Updated almost 3 years ago.
Category:
Installation / Upgrades
Description
Guide located here:
https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/solutions/sg-3100/m-2-sata-installation.html
We should update these instructions with one of two items after reinstalling pfSense, since the device will still try to boot from the eMMC if it's valid:
1. Instructions for nuking the eMMC installation and wiping all boot partitions
2. Instructions for changing the boot order to change the device to boot from M.2 first
Otherwise, customers may run into issues with their device booting from the eMMC anyway and ignoring the M.2.
1. I believe "run recovery" wipes emmc, so separate instructions here may not be needed.
2. It would be handy to have this in cases were the eMMC can't be wiped, though at that point the device should be RMA'd if possible.
Marcos Mendoza wrote:
1. I believe "run recovery" wipes emmc, so separate instructions here may not be needed.
2. It would be handy to have this in cases were the eMMC can't be wiped, though at that point the device should be RMA'd if possible.
I've tested and it definitely doesn't wipe the eMMC reliably. When you run the installer to the mSATA, it will wipe the mSATA and doesn't wipe eMMC. If the boot order is wrong, the device will not boot to mSATA ever. However, it seems that usually the boot order goes mSATA, then eMMC unless the user changes it. However, that presents the opposite problem where if you decide to install to eMMC, it'll never boot to that either, so this isn't a perfect solution. The installer should give an option to wipe all other drives on the system to ensure the other media isn't used ever.
Kris Phillips wrote:
Marcos Mendoza wrote:
1. I believe "run recovery" wipes emmc, so separate instructions here may not be needed.
2. It would be handy to have this in cases were the eMMC can't be wiped, though at that point the device should be RMA'd if possible.
I've tested and it definitely doesn't wipe the eMMC reliably. When you run the installer to the mSATA, it will wipe the mSATA and doesn't wipe eMMC. If the boot order is wrong, the device will not boot to mSATA ever. However, it seems that usually the boot order goes mSATA, then eMMC unless the user changes it. However, that presents the opposite problem where if you decide to install to eMMC, it'll never boot to that either, so this isn't a perfect solution. The installer should give an option to wipe all other drives on the system to ensure the other media isn't used ever.
I have also seen this behavior where run recovery doesn't wipe the EMMC. We should either make sure recovery proper wipes the emmc all the time if installing to msata, improve the documentation, or ideally both.
It seems the installer should be updating the U-boot variables to point to the correct install media after you run the installer. I'm not certain why I had a customer not working for this, but I tested it today and it updated correctly on my test unit so it must have had some sort of issue with that particular unit.
Still might be nice to have an option to wipe the other install media, though, but this is not a critical issue.
- Status changed from New to Rejected
Closing this as rejected, since I've tested this and it seems to have been an isolated incident.
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Updated by Michael Spears