pfSense » pfSense Plus

There isn't enough detail here to say it's an actionable bug.

Please post on the forum to discuss and diagnose the problem further.

I'm also experiencing this issue Jim Pingle. Host OS is Hyper-V 2022.

This post on reddit summarizes the issue exactly: https://www.reddit.com/r/PFSENSE/comments/11b5pj7/2301_upgrade_wont_boot_freezes_at_efi_framebuffer/

Steps to reproduce:

1. Take Hyper-V checkpoint from a power off state, power on pfSense CE 2.5.2
2. Upgrade from 2.5.2 to pfSense CE 2.6.0
3. After successful upgrade, shut pfSense CE down, and take another Hyper-V checkpoint
4. Upon successful power up, select upgrade to pfSense+ 23.01
5. Allow the upgrade to process, reboot, come back online - pfSense+ 23.01 will be working properly
6. Take a Hyper-V checkpoint from power on state (this is important as it's the rollback mechanism I'll need to use later)
7. Shut down pfSense
8. Power on pfSense. It will not boot, gets stuck with can't find /etc/hostid.
9. Reboot into Single user mode
10. ls /etc/hostid - cannot find file
11. Try to regenerate /etc/hostid (https://forum.netgate.com/topic/141691)
12. /etc/rc.d/hostid start
13. /etc/rc.d/hostid_save start
14. Receive error - cannot write to /etc/hostid
15. Revert to checkpoint from power-on state, pfSense+ restores to last online running state (works proper)
16. Reboot, receive error cannot find /etc/hostid

When I get back to the restored state, I can drop to the Hyper-V remote console and issue (#8 Shell):

1. ls /etc/hostid - file not found
2. find / -name hostid - /etc/rc.d/hostid (1 result)
3. /etc/rc.d/hostid_save start -> Successful
4. ls /etc/hostid - file present /etc/hostid
5. cat /etc/hostid - Contains a UUID.
6. kenv -q smbios.system.uuid - Contains the same UUID
7. exit (goes back to pfsense console menu)
8. take a Hyper-V power-on snapshot
9. Option 5 (reboot)
10. pfSense 23.01 reboots, comes back online normally
11. Option 6 (halt)
12. pfSense 23.01 powers off
13. Turn VM back on in Hyper-V
14. pfSense hangs, but this time without the error for /etc/hostid
15. Turn VM off
16. Turn VM on
17. Hangs at boot screen
    
18. Reset VM "a few times", pfSense eventually boots

Seems like two things are going on. pfSense+ 23.01 is not generating /etc/hostid as it is supposed to. That is correctable prior to 1st reboot with issuing /etc/rc.d/hostid_save start. However, the part where it freezes with the screenshot provided, I cannot isolate. This behavior never happened on CE 2.5 or CE 2.6, on Hyper-V 2022.

• 6GB RAM
• 2 vCPUs (Ryzen 5780, 8c16t)
• UEFI
• Secure Boot disabled
• 1 vNIC configured in allow all vlan mode (2-4094 trunk, 1000 native), default vNIC options except enabling MAC Spoofing
• All integration services offered/enabled
• Auto Start at Hyper-V Boot / Auto Shutdown on Hyper-V reboot/shutdown
• No automated checkpoints

This looks like the issue reported here which is fixed for 23.05: https://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/13895