Please move this if in wrong place! I am looking for some help as I am unsure if I am just having a bad day and missing something stupid or if there is some bug in what I am trying to achieve.
My pfSense VM will not boot in XCPng when using pcie passthrough nvme ssd’s for the install location after upgrading to XCPng 8.3. The VM console just says no mapping found.
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I have been running pfSense in a VM on XCPng for just over a year now without many issues, until yesterday when upgrading to XCPng 8.3.
It is the holidays, 8.2 support runs through to mid 2025, and I though hey no better time to bite the bullet! -
I did the original install around end of 2023, with pfSense 2.7.0 and XCPng 8.2, using the same ssd’s and pcie passthrough along with passthrough of network interfaces and QAT, then as time went on upgraded through to pfSense 2.7.2.
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I performed the XCPng 8.3 update and pfsense vm wouldn’t boot (all other VM’s booted just fine). So I figured something with the pcie passthrough had broken, no biggie lets fix that and it should boot. But it would not. And the passthrough appears to be working fine during installation etc. and everything looks as it should be in the pci assignable list’s and new assigned devices area in XOA.
The passthrough SSD’s appear fine during the installation of pfsense, but will never boot into pfsense thereafter.
I have backups of config so doing a fresh install wasn’t a big deal -
I have tried every which way and combination of 2.7, 2.7.2 pfsense installers, GPT/MBR boot records, and UEFI/BIOS VM setups to make something stick but no luck.
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I can get pfsense installed and booting if I use a regular VM disk, so I know for sure its something to do with the SSD’s and/or passthrough of drives.
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If I exit the EFI shell in VM and try to boot the pfsense entry manually in the UEFI boot manager - it just flashes a black screen.
Don’t have much time today to diagnose more, but would prefer to get this working if I can and thought I could post here to see if anyone has ideas?
P.S. If relevant - this is a Supermicro X11SDV-8C-TP8F motherboard, running x4x4 bifurcation in the second slot on a riser card for two SSD’s. BIOS is up-to-date.