[Soekris] Preparing 4G Microdrive for net4801

[Petri Ojala]

I received from net4801-50 recently from the Danish distributor and  
I'm trying to get pfSense firewall installed on a 4G Microdrive that  
would be pretty good for the job.  However I'm having trouble getting  
the system to boot properly from the 4G microdrive.  Is there  
something special one should do when preparing a 4G "CF" on a FreeBSD  
PC to be used on the net4801?  Everything works just fine with the 2G  
CF memory card but with the 4G microdrive, it just doesn't work  
properly when attached to the net4801.


I wrote the following on the pfSense mailing list:

I'm really puzzled by the problem.

I used LiveCD on a Thinkpad laptop to install pfSense on a MicroDrive/ 
CF-card using CF/USB-adapter.  99 from the menu, following the  
options to format and partition the whole drive/card for FreeBSD,  
bootloader installed, etc.  After installation I'd take the MD/CF and  
install it on a net4801-50.

1) 2G CF-card

The installation goes smoothly, full 2G accessible, everything looks  
fine.  Boot on the net4801 looks fine and the system starts up.
ad1: 2000MB <SAMSUNG CF/ATA 04/05/06> at ata0-slave PIO4 is shown  
before mounting root.
Manual root fs mount's ? gives the ad1's as the valid disk boot devices

2) 4G Microdrive

The installation goes smoothly, full 4G accessible in the format/ 
partitioning, everything looks fine, on the PC the CF mounts quite  
fine and I can change the /etc/ttys and /etc/fstab to correct  
information.  Installed the Microdrive to the net4801.  The BIOS will  
load but it cannot boot automatically, doing manually 'boot' without  
any parameters will start the FreeBSD kernel loading.  Kernel  
messages start to arrive.  At the time it should mount root fs, it  
fails.  Unlike with the 2G CF card, it doesn'tshow the ad1: ...  
message for the microdrive.  Giving ? to list the valid devices  
doesn't show any device.


There are no LBA settings I can find in the Thinkbad BIOS, especially  
not for the CF/USB-adapter.  Soekris manual mentions that it's using  
standard CHS mapping for smaller CF cards and LBA for >2G CF cards  
and microdrives.  Would it be possible that in the LiveCD FreeBSD  
installation it would use something else for the 4G mapping that  
would make the 4G CF microdrive incompatible with the Soekris-box?   
Any ideas how can I make a Soekris-compatible 4G CF card on the PC?


Petri