How to install pfSense® software on the APU
Install [pf] on an APU without tearing your hair out
So you’ve got your hands on an awesome APU board, but now what?
How about installing the pfSense® software, the most awesome open-source firewall and router software around?
Yes? Excellent!
Well, before you go leaping in head-first, there’s a couple of things you need to know.
- The SD card is functioning as a USB device, which is slower for read/write purposes than a normal hard drive, and so the root partition is not available by the time that the boot loader tries to mount the root filesystem.
- Being a newer device, the APU requires write caching and DMA to be enabled in order to be able to access an mSATA drive correctly.
If you don’t account for these quirks, your board will most likely hang during boot and you’ll tear your hair out trying to figure out why.
Follow along as we show you how to install the pfSense® software onto an APU board, using either the standard image from the pfSense® website or our ready-made done-for-you customised Rident™ image based on the pfSense® software.
Download a ready-made pfSense® software image for the APU and net6501
To make your life even easier, we’ve created our own Rident™ custom done-for-you images based on the pfSense® software for the APU and net6501, that you just can just download and install yourself.
Our images are based on the standard embedded image from the pfSense® website, but have three important differences:
- The ethernet ports are pre-assigned
- It doesn’t hang during boot
- It resets to our factory defaults
So if you want an easy, painless way to get an optimised pfSense® system working on your APU or net6501, then you might want to take a look at our pre-built Rident™ images.
Sign up for email updates and support Voyage Linux
Did you know that we donate $5 to support the development of Voyage Linux every time someone signs up to our email newsletter?
It’s such an awesome piece of software that we want to make sure it’s around for a very long time, and that it just keeps getting better and better.
So if you’re not signed up for email updates and you’d like to keep in touch with what we’re doing, or you know someone else who might be interested in our stuff, now you can sign up for our monthly newsletter and support Voyage Linux at the same time.
Awesome!
Note: Some basic conditions do apply, to make sure that we can support Voyage Linux in a sustainable way.
In other news
Product changes
We’re now offering the option for a 3-year extended warranty on all of our APU products.
They already come with a 2-year warranty as standard, but if you need the peace of mind of a slightly longer warranty period, now you can choose to extend it by another 12 months.
New Rident images for the APU, ALIX and net6501
We’ve created a bunch of new Rident™ images (our customised version of the pfSense® software) for the APU, ALIX and net6501 including mSATA and SD card versions for the APU 1.
These images are based on the latest version of the pfSense® software (v2.1.3) and have some extra features to make using them even easier.
You can download them from our operating system images page and install them yourself.
New Voyage image for the ALIX
We also now have a updated image of Voyage Linux (v0.9.2) for the ALIX, also available on our operating system images page.
Download it, install it on your ALIX board, and be up and running in no time at all.
Tips & resources
Top 5 open source project management tools
Want to use open-source software to manage your next project?
Here’s a handy list of five open-source project management tools, with heaps of features and a promising future.
opensource.com/business/14/1/top-project-management-tools-2014
Write your first Linux kernel module
Ever wanted to write modify the Linux kernel, but didn’t know where to start?
Here’s a great tutorial on writing your first Linux kernel module.
www.linuxvoice.com/be-a-kernel-hacker/
Thanks for reading and have a fantastic day!
