Hardware

Hello,

I have a little problem with saving the configuration of my m0n0wall to an USB stick. I am using m0n0wall version 1.3b4.

I have an MSI K8MM3 mainboard. I tried installing the ide/cf image to a CF card (via a USB multicard reader) and to a USB memory stick but my mainboard doesn't boot from them (another machine, which I cannot use as firewall can boot from both of them so it is a problem with my mainboard) so I decided to boot from a CD. This works fine but I want as little moving parts as possible so I decided to format my 16mb USB stick wit a FAT fs and use that to store my configuration on.

When booting the m0n0wall software, it detects the USB stick, sees that there is 15mb available and then tells me that there is no USB stick or floppy drive with a FAT filesystem.

I tried this with both a 16mb USB 1 stick and a 1Gb USB 2 stick. Both formatted with FAT and I also tried the 1GB formatted with FAT32.

When booting, I get the following messages:
[...]
BIOS CD is cd0
BIOS drive A: is disk0
[...]
da0 at umass-sim0 bus 0 target 0 lun 0
da0: <OTi Flash Disk 2.00> Removable Direct Access SCSI-2 device
da0: 40.000 MB/s transfers
da0: 1000MB (204800 512 byte sectors 64H 32S/T 1000C)

*****
* WARNING!
* No FAT formatted USB memory stick or floppy disk could be found
* Your configuration changes will be lost on reboot
***
[...]

Can anybody tell me if I am doing something wrong and if so what?

Thanx

Greetinx
Johan

Okay, I fixed the issue with storing the configuration on the USB stick.

I originally formatted the stick under windows. That didn't work out.

Then I formatted the disk under Linux (Fedora 7) using the following steps (as root):
# fdisk /dev/sdb (<- that's the USB stick in my case)
   * Create a single primairy partition of the entire disk. Keystrokes in my case:
   n (new partition)
   p (primairy)
   1 (partition 1)
   <ENTER> (default First cylinder)
   <ENTER> (default last cylinder)
   w (write table to disk and exit)
# mkdosfs /dev/sdb1

At least, now I don't need a floppy drive anymore to store the configuration.

If only I can find a way to boot of the USB stick.......

Did you try a CF/IDE adapter to boot from a CF card ? This should work flawlessly. You can get them for a few bucks on eBay.

Yes, I got an CF/IDE adapter for a couple of Euros but my MSI K8MM3-V mainboards bios hangs when it is searching for IDE devices when I have the CF/IDE adapter connected. 

So, I still have to use the CDROM drive but I can have the config written to my USB stick.

Hi there,

Even though i have ordered an cf to ide adapter to over come my problem with a hp vectra motherboard it appears to recognise the usb stick just not be able to mount or write to it.

I am not sure about your instructions as i dont have a full bsd to use.
(only freenas under vmware and monowall on a oldish pc)  Any clearification on how to use these commands that got your usb stick working please.

Keystrokes (in your case) Where do i type these?


do you nean thats #fdisk /dev/usbthing np1  ? 

Please give some basic guidance if possible.
---------------------------------------------------------------

Then I formatted the disk under Linux (Fedora 7) using the following steps (as root):
# fdisk /dev/sdb (<- that's the USB stick in my case)
   * Create a single primairy partition of the entire disk. Keystrokes in my case:
   n (new partition)
   p (primairy)
   1 (partition 1)
   <ENTER> (default First cylinder)
   <ENTER> (default last cylinder)
   w (write table to disk and exit)
# mkdosfs /dev/sdb1

At least, now I don't need a floppy drive anymore to store the configuration.

If only I can find a way to boot of the USB stick.......


[/quote]

I ran the fdisk command on a Fedora system so not a BSD system, but I think any Linux version will do.

The keystrokes are entered at the fdisk menus. You start fdisk and enter the single characters (n,p,1 and w) followed by <ENTER>

Hope it helps you out.

Greetinx
Johan