Preface: I am using Windows 7 64bit, a CompactFlash (CF) card reader and a kit from netgate.com which includes a 4GB CF card, ALIX board, power supply and enclosure. Beyond the use of m0n0wall’s physdiskwrite (you would use dd or something similar on OS X or Linux) the instructions should be the same.
In my never ending quest for the perfect router I came across pfSense. It was love at first sight yet I didn’t make any serious use of it. Any hardware I could install it on was too bulky and consumed too much power. Even those nifty SuperMicro Atom servers were too much for my needs. Then I discovered ALIX2D13 (netgate.com) and all was right with the world. The features of pfSense with the power usage of any old consumer grade router.
From the board specs you might notice a glaring omission; video. No VGA or any of it’s fancier digital cousins so what are our options? Plenty of Ethernet and a serial port. While no stranger to the wonders of 9600 baud I felt there had to be a better way that didn’t involve me finding a USB-to-Serial adapter and null-model cable (not a big deal but I wanted my router now!)
Using m0n0wall’s physdiskwrite I was able to write the pfSense image to my CF card using one of those all-in-one memory card readers. This is the key. You need to use one of the nanoBSD images such as the pfSense-2.0.1-RELEASE-4g-i386-nanobsd.img.gz which if you purchase the kit from netgate contains a 4GB CF card (hence the 4g in the name).
Upon completion, you simply insert the CF card and plug in an live Ethernet cable into the port closest to the power (labeled LAN). You should then be able to see the the pfSense installation on your DHCP table of your current router. If you are without a router/DHCP server the IP address will be 192.168.1.1.
- Download the appropriate NanoBSD image for your CD Card (if larger than 4GB, get the 4g image, the rest of the space will be wasted regardless).
- Download m0n0wall’s physdiskwrite. If you are on OS X or Linux you have the dd command which I am not confident enough to instruct on it’s use.
- Use physdiskwrite to write the pfSense .img to your CF card. This took over half an hour for me but your mileage may vary.
- Insert CF card onto the ALIX board, insert an Ethernet cable into the LAN port and depending on your existing network your pfSense box will have a DHCP provisioned IP address or a static one of 192.168.1.1. Initial boot up may take a few minutes.
- If you are able to successfully ping your pfSense box then you can visit it via the web interface at https://192.168.1.1 or whatever address your DHCP server assigned it.
- From the web interface, go ahead and setup your WAN, LAN and other settings.
A word of warning. Make sure you get those WAN/LAN settings correct the first time. There is no “reset” button like on a consumer grade router and you wouldn’t be here if you were able to access your pfSense box via a serial cable.
Good luck and please don’t hesitate to comment or make corrections as I wrote this after the fact.