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    Watchguard Firebox M400/M500

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    • chpalmerC Offline
      chpalmer @jriofrio
      last edited by

      @jriofrio said in Watchguard Firebox M400/M500:

      @korenchkin .... Hello everyone, just wanted to mention that the cable (the rj45 to db9) and a new CF card didn't work at all.

      Id have to go back and look but did you try a (light blue) Cisco cable? The ones I have do work and are fully wired.

      From my rememberings.. I used an old laptop and wrote the hard drive that I installed in my M400 and then used a package to install the firmware.

      I was just having too many issues trying to get the CF card to work.

      Triggering snowflakes one by one..
      Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4590T CPU @ 2.00GHz on an M400 WG box.

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      • stephenw10S Offline
        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator @jriofrio
        last edited by

        @jriofrio said in Watchguard Firebox M400/M500:

        So, my only option is to flash the BIOS directly.

        Well you can still just not flash it all all. 😉 You can just install pfSense to the CF card in something else and then move it across. Or install to an SSD and put that in.

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        • M Offline
          Mookatroid
          last edited by Mookatroid

          Hey all,
          Just for a nostalgic flashback, I thought I'd pickup an M400. :)
          So I did that yesterday.
          I still have my VGA adapter, so that was an unexpected bonus.
          Not sure about all M400 units but the device I picked up, by factory default, has no Serial Console Redirect enabled at all. Tragic.
          And even with the VGA adapter in play, so far I cannot find any way to boot from USB.
          So I must digress and ponder.
          If all else fails, I will push the pfSense CE installer image to the CF, boot from CF and install pfSense to SSD from there. or, do the same but flash the BIOS first via CF boot.
          Always a plot twist I tell ya.

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          • J Online
            jriofrio @Mookatroid
            last edited by

            @Mookatroid ..... Hello everyone, today I was able to take a look into the original CF card.
            In old DOS os I used to modify the autoexe.bat in order to boot the way I wanted.
            Does Linux has something like that in which I can make it to do something that I will be able to modify the BIOS or allows me to look into the USB sticks... Etc.
            I never tried before cause Everytime that I connected to the windows PC it wanted to format it. Yesterday I put together a PC and installed Linux mint and I was able to see the m400 CF card.
            Please let me know if there is anything that I could do here..... Good day

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            • J Online
              jriofrio @stephenw10
              last edited by

              @stephenw10 .... using the tinym400, not working
              Screenshot from 2025-11-26 13-38-59.png

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              • J Online
                jriofrio @jriofrio
                last edited by

                I have tried many different ways in order to make afulnx to run but it looks like the afulnx app is not present in the image you created... let me know please. I might be doing or typing it wrong....

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                • K Online
                  korenchkin @jriofrio
                  last edited by

                  @jriofrio use tab for autocomplete and ls (-la if you want 1 line for 1 item),maybe find /|grep -i afu (to find afuwhatever,that pipe before grep is on the backslash key on us keyb, -i ignore case)

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                  • J Online
                    jriofrio @korenchkin
                    last edited by

                    @korenchkin .... I tried what you said.... I got this
                    Screenshot from 2025-11-26 14-42-44.png

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                    • J Online
                      jriofrio @jriofrio
                      last edited by

                      i am not sure what you meant with use TAB to autocomplete... my bad, i didn't include find and now i got a long list of files

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                      • K Online
                        korenchkin @jriofrio
                        last edited by

                        @jriofrio i see you have no background in dos :)
                        i can clearly see afulnx_x64 (or something similar,half-hidden under message now),so use that info, tab is for when you write afu and press "tab",it will autocomplete if there are no 2 afuaa and afubb...if there are,after second tab it will list all options and you need another letter...if no autocomplete,you might have wrong path...

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                        • J Online
                          jriofrio @korenchkin
                          last edited by

                          @korenchkin yes, you are correct... i run the commands including the _64 and it worked.... thank you very much for your help... im happy now.

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                          • K Online
                            korenchkin @jriofrio
                            last edited by

                            @jriofrio happy flashing,this means first step was bios backup,now flash new and wishing good luck and good power lines :)

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                            • J Online
                              jriofrio @korenchkin
                              last edited by

                              @korenchkin ....Here, here :]

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                              • J Online
                                jriofrio @jriofrio
                                last edited by

                                question: i did manage to run the tinym400 linux and i wasn't able to make a copy of backup.rom.
                                ONCE I FLASHed THE BIOS, i run the command to make a backup2.rom of the flash bios.

                                i shut the m400 box and took the ssd where i installed the tinym400 and connected it to mu linux PC, but i can't see the /opt/rom drive in order to get the copies of the rom backups.

                                i tried to do it through the terminal with the mkdir, mount, and all that stuff.
                                I was able to get into the ssd but still can get access to the opt/rom directory.

                                linux mint disk is of not use, i see the folders but not the opt/rom directory.
                                is there a way i can get to those files?

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                                • K Online
                                  korenchkin @jriofrio
                                  last edited by

                                  @jriofrio if it works,you dont need the bios,it is better the new one,but if you really want it,it should be in home or root(not exactly sure now with the sudo,so either /home/'username' (look at your picture,i think there was the name of user maybe),or it could be /root (if sudo works on it) ...i mean the ~ character =home

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