pfsense vm creation help

[luca2 2]

Hi!

Cannot find any guide for setting up a pfsense vm in unraid!

What template should I choose? Anyone has a custom one that can share?

I tried with FreeBSD but once install GUI appears it says disk not present. Any ideas how to solve this?

Rgds.

[DZMM 53]

There's some weird behaviour with pfsense.  For some (including me initially) pfsense wouldn't install with anything greater than Q35-2.6....however , after hammering away at it I did get pfsense Q35-2.11 to work but no idea how as it made no sense.  This thread will help

 

 

[luca2 2]

8 minutes ago, DZMM said:

There's some weird behaviour with pfsense.  For some (including me initially) pfsense wouldn't install with anything greater than Q35-2.6....however , after hammering away at it I did get pfsense Q35-2.11 to work but no idea how as it made no sense.  This thread will help

 

 

 

[luca2 2]

I run unraid 6.4. Tried several and only "q35-2.6" worked.

Thx.

[luca2 2]

I run unraid 6.4. Tried several and only "q35-2.6" worked.
Thx.

Hi, my quad-intel-nic still not arrived. But I am reading niw on how to set it up.
A quick question. I am planning on assigning the Intel nic to this VM (passthrough). So, how should I proceed (right after starting the VM for the first time and first setup)?
I guess I need to:
-assign 1 of the 4 ports to the wan(but where do I setup this .. in unraid>network settings?
-assign another port of the nic to the lan
Maybe someone already posted a guide for doing this in a VM in unraid?
Rgds

[DZMM 53]

4 minutes ago, luca2 said:

Hi, my quad-intel-nic still not arrived. But I am reading niw on how to set it up.
A quick question. I am planning on assigning the Intel nic to this VM (passthrough). So, how should I proceed (right after starting the VM for the first time and first setup)?
I guess I need to:
-assign 1 of the 4 ports to the wan(but where do I setup this .. in unraid>network settings?
-assign another port of the nic to the lan
Maybe someone already posted a guide for doing this in a VM in unraid?
Rgds

you just assign the nic in unraid settings and then when the vm starts up it will see the nic and you can run through the standard pfsense setup

[joelones 2]

I just did a pfSense install myself in a VM. I used q35-2.6 and the install was trouble free.

 

I'm assuming you want to pass the whole quad NIC to pfsense (all four ports) correct? If this is the case, then you'd be better off passing through the whole controller. You'll need to run the following command and see if the quad nic is in it's own IOMMU group:

for iommu_group in $(find /sys/kernel/iommu_groups/ -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -type d);do echo "IOMMU group $(basename "$iommu_group")"; for device in $(\ls -1 "$iommu_group"/devices/); do if [[ -e "$iommu_group"/devices/"$device"/reset ]]; then echo -n "[RESET]"; fi; echo -n $'\t';lspci -nns "$device"; done; done

If so, copy & paste the identifier between brackets [] and append it to /boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg file:

 

label unRAID OS
  menu default
  kernel /bzimage
  append vfio-pci.ids=IDENTIFIER ...

Then reboot and you should see the four ports in "Other PCI Devices:", then start VM and  proceed with the standard pfsense installation. pfSense should see the Intel quad nic at that point and you can assign WAN, LAN interfaces.

 

On another note, I've yet to try it but does the pfsense VM respond to the Stop gui command?

 

Edited Tuesday at 12:50 PM by joelones

[luca2 2]

I just did a pfSense install myself in a VM. I used q35-2.6 and the install was trouble free.
 
I'm assuming you want to pass the whole quad NIC to pfsense (all four ports) correct? If this is the case, then you'd be better off passing through the whole controller. You'll need to run the following command and see if the quad nic is in it's own IOMMU group:

for iommu_group in $(find /sys/kernel/iommu_groups/ -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -type d);do echo "IOMMU group $(basename "$iommu_group")"; for device in $(\ls -1 "$iommu_group"/devices/); do if [[ -e "$iommu_group"/devices/"$device"/reset ]]; then echo -n "[RESET]"; fi; echo -n $'\t';lspci -nns "$device"; done; done

If so, copy & paste the identifier between brackets [] and append it to /boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg file:
 

label unRAID OS menu default kernel /bzimage append vfio-pci.ids=IDENTIFIER ...

Then reboot and you should see the four ports in "Other PCI Devices:", then start VM and  proceed with the standard pfsense installation. pfSense should see the Intel quad nic at that point and you can assign WAN, LAN interfaces.
 
On another note, I've yet to try it but does the pfsense VM respond to the Stop gui command?
 

Yes, I want to passthrough the whole quad nic. Will check how iommu groups are.

No, Stop does not work. Only forcing a shutdown works.