Watchguard XTM 5 Series
-
Hello Guys,
I've had a working pfsense XTM 5 for 4 months, than after upgrading to 2.5 when it came out, it started to crash sometimes and never understand what was causing it, even using 2.4.5.
Left the watchguard on the side for other 6 months and went with a pfsense VM, but after going without internet when doing maintence on the server was a no go.
So I'm revisiting the watchguard pfsense again.
This time I installed the 2.5.2 pfsense version on a new 120gb SSD, new sata cable, and reflashed the bios and looks like its working.
But before going further with pfsense configs and getting it in production I want to ask you guys what changes do you do in the BIOS beside the AHCI option ?
What about the ACPI, you keep it at v1.0 or change it to 2.0 or even 3.0 ?
Any more changes worth doing ?ps: should we choose the MBR Dos partitions or GPT GUID partition table on the install ?
Thanks
-
I would use the defaults for partition type. So MBR for UFS and GPT for ZFS if you choose that.
-
@stephenw10
When installing pfsense 2.5 the default showed was GPT ZFS and now in 2.5.2 it shows me MBR UFS and got confused.
Using a single SSD for pfsense is better to use the ZFS or UFS ?
I choosed ZFS don't knowing if it was better. -
Not much in it if you have stable power IMO. If you might see power interruptions ZFS is far more robust, far less likely to suffer filesystem damage in the event of an outage.
If you can run RAM drives that removes that problem but isn't really suitable for packages like Snort or pfBlocker. Though it can work.Steve
-
Figured I'd try here first.
I've got an XTM 5 series that was running great until I went to upgrade to 2.5.2 last week. The system never came up and when I went to check on the box it was sitting there with the fans running on high and the LCD display has all black boxes showing.
I've done the following with the same results.
Pulled the battery to clear the CMOS.
Tried new RAM.
Tried a new to me CPU.
Disconnected the hard drive and SATA cord.
Tried the original flash drive.
Nothing on the mainboard appears to be fried.
I cannot remember if I flashed the BIOS to something other than what it came with when I first set this up.Any other suggestions or is this thing toast? It doesnt POST. No beeps, no nothing but fans on high and 5 green lights by the fan connectors on the mainboard. Nothing on the console either.
-
Mmm, probably nothing you can do if it won't POST even after swapping the CPU and RAM.
I would guess it's bad caps on the board. You might try a different PSU if you have not already.
Steve
-
@stephenw10 said in Watchguard XTM 5 Series:
Mmm, probably nothing you can do if it won't POST even after swapping the CPU and RAM.
I would guess it's bad caps on the board. You might try a different PSU if you have not already.
Steve
I have not tried a different PSU but will track one down to try. Its a bummer, this thing was running great before this lol.
-
@frosty It's the same problem I had with mine!
Try to let it sit with no power for a day or so.
With mine I could get it up and see it boot this way.It's strange, maybe some faulted hardware or is a Bios/harware incompatibilty with 2.5 version.
Witch cpu does your have?
PS: When I have some time and if I find it again, I will try to test with the original Bios.
-
@gaiex said in Watchguard XTM 5 Series:
@frosty It's the same problem I had with mine!
Try to let it sit with no power for a day or so.
With mine I could get it up and see it boot this way.It's strange, maybe some faulted hardware or is a Bios/harware incompatibilty with 2.5 version.
Witch cpu does your have?
PS: When I have some time and if I find it again, I will try to test with the original Bios.
It sat for 4-5 days with no power and the battery removed, same result unfortunately.
I’ll have to check what the original cpu was but I also tried an Intel Core 2 Duo E8400. I was hoping it was the cpu but no luck.
-
Mmm, that's quite common on a system with failing caps. It can take multiple attempts to start for example.
-
Well its not the power supply. I picked up another XTM 5 for relatively cheap since I had gotten a CPU and additional RAM. I tried its power supply on the dead box, same results. At this point that box is toast.
New to me one is up and running with an E8400 and 4 GB of RAM. Just swapped in the CPU, RAM and old HD and it booted right up.
-
I have recently acquired a XTM 5 515 series. I have followed every instruction I could find on installing Pfsesne to it. I installed it to a hard drive and then moved it over after removing the CF card. Bring up the terminal and see the bios post and then I get nothing from the console. I have tried the unplugging the cable from both ends and re attaching it to no avail. I tried changing the speed from 115200 to 9600 and restarting putty, minicom and whatever else I could try.
To no avail do I get the console output past the bios post. I looked in the bios and the console redirect past post is disabled and is set to read only for the bios as all others have been.
I did notice the bios in this unit is 4/26/2010 the ones I have seen having success are prior to this like 4/3/2010.
Any ideas, or possible fixes? It gets to the full load of pfsense and beeps as it is suppose too.
-
What image exactly did you use to install to the HD?
If it wasn't the serial console image did you enable the serial console before moving the drive back?
Steve
-
Everything I read, no one used the serial console version. So now I know something I did not before. I had not thought about it as much as I have done it using console. I will go back and do it again.
Thank you.
-
If you install using the serial console image it will enable the serial console on the resulting install automatically. But to do so you need to do the actual install in something that also has a serial console. Many people don't have access to that.
So you can install from the regular image but be sure to boot at least once in the install device3 so you can access the gui and enable the serial console in Sys > Adv > Admin Access.
Or you can use the serial console image on a CF card to install on the XTM5 itself.
Steve
-
@stephenw10 Thanks, got it up and running. Do you happen to know the cpu's that can be used to upgrade teh XTM5 515? It has a E3400 Celeron in it and that is LGA775 and I keep seeing conflicting information on Core 2 and Core 2 Quad and memory they say socket T lga 775.
I think the best on memory for this unit will be 4GB in 2 sticks of 800mhz CL6 unless someone knows a source that has 4GB and the board will support it?
-
Almost everything anyone has tried is in this thread somewhere. I think it's possible to run 8G though I've not tried it myself and 4G is fine for almost everything.
The C2D E8400 is about the best performance for the price IMO. I did run that for a while with zero issues.Steve
-
Man, it's been a long time since I've been here. Amazed to see this thread is still going. I started re-reading the whole thread last night and just finished up. Looks like there's some more tinkering that could be done with the BIOS on these things... I'll have to check and see if I still have all the tools from before.
@stephenw10 I can confirm that it will run with 8GB of RAM as I just installed 2x4GB sticks that I had sitting on a shelf in it today. Specifically, they are a pair of Elpida 4GB 2Rx8 PC2-6400U-666 sticks that apparently came out of an HP machine. I believe the memory part number is EBE41UF8ABFA-8G-E 0921AXE0681 as both of those are written above the barcode and are the same on both sticks. The HP P/N is 492275-888 which is much easier to figure out. lol
From my understanding though, any "low density" 4GB DDR2 800 unbuffered RAM should work. Amazed at what the prices on that are still commanding. I thought I was going to have a bunch of extra RAM (that runs extra cool and is so much more awesome because they have that hip heat spreader on them... lol) that I could possibly look at unloading... But alas! Though they're sticks of 4GB DDR 2 from an HP Intel server, I only took a quick glance at it. It's PC2-5300F according to the sticker on the heat spreader. This has a slightly different placement of the pins and doesn't fit on the board. (Think the F might be one of the ECC designations, I can't remember and it's been a while since I pulled it out of whatever servers it was that they were in. But as they were servers, it most likely was ECC, though they were servers I saved from being sent to the recycler from another school district or local college. Or it might have been one of the ones we got from said recycler.) Would have saved me a bunch of trouble if I'd have just looked at it a little closer before bringing home a dozen or so sticks. lol
Having that serial port permanently installed on the back is rather handy when booting up into the FreeDOS image that I apparently still have on this CF card. Plugged it into the serial port on my PC and used a USB-to-DB9 with a "Cisco" (it's actually from Extreme, but they use the same Cisco rollover pinout) cable to the console port. 2 copies of KiTTY running so I don't have to switch settings between BIOS and FreeDOS. I think I might get/put together a VGA cable as well just to do it. Not sure if I'd want to put it on the back next to the serial port or maybe try to be very delicate and get it mounted in the front so I'd have the USB ports right next to it for a keyboard/KVM... Never thought I'd be looking at doing more hardware modding with this old box... lol
-
@stephenw10 do you have a copy of WGXepc64 that will work with 2.7?
-
The current version works:
[2.7.0-DEVELOPMENT][root@xtm5.stevew.lan]/root: ./WGXepc64 Found Firebox XTM5 WGXepc Version 1.6_1 22/11/2020 stephenw10 WGXepc can accept two arguments: -f (CPU fan) will return the current and minimum fan speed or if followed by a number in hex, 00-FF, will set it. -f2 (System fan) will return the current and minimum fan speed or if followed by a number in hex, 00-FF, will set it. -l (led) will set the arm/disarm led state to the second argument: red, green, red_flash, green_flash, red_flash_fast, green_flash_fast, off -b (backlight) will set the lcd backlight to the second argument: on or off. Do not use with LCD driver. -t (temperature) shows the current CPU temperature reported by the SuperIO chip. X-e box only. Not all functions are supported by all modelsYou might also be interested in the attached script that I've had for a while but never got around to adding into WGXepc.
I'm seeing some odd instability in this box in 2.7a though. It is pretty old at this point I guess.
Steve
