Trying to install OPNSense on an older Alibaba system I had laying around, and I noticed that I couldn’t install due to the system freezing at the “Booting…” prompt (post kernel loading).

When booting, press “3” to Escape to loader prompt.

• Type set kern.vty=sc
• Press enter
• Type boot
• Press enter

Assuming the system boots and you can install, you’ll have to edit a file in the /boot directory to get the system to boot with future restarts.

• cd /boot; press enter
• vi loader.conf.local; press enter
• i
• kern.vty=sc
• Press esc
• :wq!; press enter

I should note that this fix was permanent between reboots and updates until just recently; patched a remote system of similar specs and it required the creation of the loader.conf.local file again.