Unable to install firmware - new install of Sophos XG

Hi dilbert,

I am seeing this exact same issue, with a very similar build, using a Ryzen 3 2200g and 8gb memory + 240gb SSD.  I'm curious if you ever found a solution?  Out of curiosity, what motherboard are you using?

After the aborted install, I dropped into busybox and could see that there is an ioctl error, but I'm stuck as to where to go next as well.

I fought with it for a while after I posted the original message but never found a solution.  I had found a few messages that it could be the XG software and that Sophos UTM would probably work fine with the same thumb drive, but I haven't tried it yet.

My motherboard is the Asus ROG Strix B450 and I also have the Ryzen 3 2200g CPU.

Interesting, I'm running an Asrock B450. I wonder if it's actually something on the B450 chipset that is the issue, or maybe the SATA controller.

I'll be trying an NVME stick next.

I used the same thumb drive and same computer, but installed Sophos UTM 9.5 today instead of Sophos XG and had no problems.  I thought I had seen another thread that the XG installer had problems still, which seems to be the case for me.  I was able to restore the backup I made on my old UTM firewall and the new one is good to go.

Bumping this :

I have had this unable to load firmware for over the last 15 months or so for the XG train.  I try every new version thats published but I can not get past the firmware loading error. I have used several USB thumb drivers. Added a usb cd/DVD driver and thats replicates the issue. Played with the bios settings. Followed all the hints and tips for this issue over the years. All to no avail.

Once it failes you can boot of the internal SSD drive and it brings you to a diagnostic screen. Tajking the advanced diags I obtain shell access. However im not familiar with the structure of the XG  directories.  Its 30 years plus since I used Unix in anger although some of the commands do come back to me.

I am wondering where the instller log file resides so I can examine this  (vi) and try to obtain a hint of whats failing.

Can anyone point me to the location of the installer log file written to the SSD whilst the XG software installs onto the SSD?

Thanks

Don

Hi,

if you want yo use the XG try installing the free copy of VMware 6.x and then install XG.

ian

Hi Ian

Thanks for the tip. However, I'm  not so hot on VMware. I did try this once before.

Out of sheer doggedness I would like to find the underlying issue. Its why I was asking about the location of the Installer log files. Even wondered is there is a verbose mode for the install.

Whilst the hardware is Intel at the core, the Nic's are realtec. I have seen some mention of performance issues but not anything that says they just don't work.  I may try and edit the installer.cfg and remove "quiet" however that requires some more thought.

I found this https://community.sophos.com/kb/en-us/125209

This I can almost do ….  however,  I have no access to the .pgp firmware. Its embedded in the install disk and have no access to it.  This is normal of course.

Seen some mention of log files "u2d.log and "csc.log"  … I can not see these on the SSD and with no "find" command its longhand "ls -laR | grep csc "   no matching files found though.

The threads I have seen in the forum  usually just peter out with people just jiving up.

Regards

Don

Maybe you tried this already but I was unable to install XG Home until I used balena Etcher (https://www.balena.io/etcher/) to create the installer flash drive from the iso-file. Rufus and other tools didn't work for me even when I followed the hints from the community.

Good afternoon Jelle

I whole heartedly agree with you . BalenaEtcher is my goto app for writing most things of an ISO  format to any USB stick.

I have also tried :-

Rufus3.3.exe

Win32diskimager

Hopefully someone will be able to give me the correct name and location on the installer log file/s so I can make sense of what is happening.

Regards

Don

Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts contributors.