pfSense Plus Boot Environment Stability Issues¶

Device: Netgate SG-2100 Max (ARM Cortex-A53, aarch64)
Version: pfSense Plus 24.03 / 23.05.1
Pool: ZFS (ada0s3a)
Date: March 19, 2026

Summary¶

Multiple critical boot environment (BE) failures occur when booting a 24.03 BE cloned from a 23.05.1 snapshot.

Impact includes:

• Unbootable systems
• Data inaccessibility
• Manual recovery required

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Bug 1 — Mounted BE Not Cleared on Reboot¶

Behavior:
A BE mounted with bectl mount remains marked as mounted after reboot if not manually unmounted.

Error:

mountroot: unable to remount devfs under /dev (error 2)
mountroot: unable to unlink /dev/dev (error 2)

Expected:
All non-root datasets should be unmounted automatically during reboot or pool import.

Impact:
Boot failure.

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Bug 2 — Clone BE Missing /boot at Boot Time¶

Behavior:
Clone-based BEs do not contain a local /boot directory. Bootloader cannot access inherited files.

Error:

ERROR: cannot open /boot/lua/loader.lua: no such file or directory

Expected:
Bootloader must be able to access required boot files.

Impact:
System cannot boot.

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Bug 3 — Kernel/Module Mismatch Causes Boot Hang¶

Behavior:
24.03 kernel loads with 23.05.1 inherited modules due to ZFS clone.

Error:

mountroot: unable to remount devfs under /dev (error 2)
Dual Console: Serial Primary, Video Secondary
[hang]

Expected:
Kernel and modules must match within the same BE.

Impact:
System hang during boot.

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Bug 4 — loader.conf.lua Misparsed by Older Bootloader¶

Behavior:
23.05.1 bootloader parses loader.conf.lua as plain text.

Error:

Malformed line (1): 'if _ENV["smbios.system.maker"] == "Netgate" then'
Failed to parse config: '/boot/loader.conf.lua'

Expected:
Lua configs should not be parsed as key=value files.

Impact:
Boot errors and instability.

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Reproduction Notes¶

Occurs when:

• Creating BE via bectl create -e
• Upgrading from 23.05.1 → 24.03
• Switching between clone-based environments

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Recovery Required¶

Manual recovery via bootloader and file copying is required to restore bootability.