Netgate 6100 bricked

Networking & Firewalls
1

dears

while upgrading the firmware of my 6100 i seem to have bricked it.
I can not reach it anymore.

I want to connect via console to the device and check if i can do something on the cli.

Q:
What cable exactly do i need to connect a laptop directly to the console? i am a bit confused by the manual.
Do you have any link to a fitting cable?

nervous,
Stefan

2

You’d be better off opening a ticket with Netgate.

Kinda why I like these cheap chinese boxes, can easily wipe the HDD when I mess up, had already bricked a few consumer routers in the past!

3

Update:
I have established sucessfully a connection to the 6100 via usb.

if i execute “reboot” i can choose between r “clear boot order list” and p “PXE boot” and f2 “Boot manager”

new Question:
In case i need to reinstall the system is there a way to backup/restore my current setup?
right before this disaster i made a new boot environment

4

update:
I booted into option 1 eMMC bootx63.efi
that ended in “cannot open /boot/lua/loader.lua no such file or directory”
.
I assume, that the firmware upgrade somehow destroyed the boot partition or similar
.
any hints how to recover that?

5

You should be able to download the the installer on a usb stick and then console in. Follow the documentation.

https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/solutions/netgate-6100/reinstall-pfsense.html

6

tnx for the answer
I did as described, but the box doesnt boot from the stick, nor can i select the usb in the boot menu.
I am clueless :frowning:
i opened a new topic for this probkem:

7

I sorted it out.
A firware upgrade failed. I assume i was to impatient and unplugged the 6100 from power too early, instead of waiting.
This corrupted the boot partition and left it unresponsive.
Via TAC i received a new image promptly.
The “usb-stick-problem” was a slight confusion regarding my rack mount… note to myself: connect the box to external frontside usb ports facepalm
Installing pfsense from there on was straight forward.
I had a local backup.xml, so i was able to recover 80% of my settings.

8

Automated your PFSense backups to the cloud