Successful Install on Watchguard Firebox X700!
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anyone tried a full hard drive install with a IDE adapter, instead of embedded ?
(-edited to add, this works fine)
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On another platform, yes. The FX5620 comes with a built in IDE-CF adaptor and I plugged a microdrive in then did a full install onto that.
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Would this work on the older WG FB II?
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Have a look here http://www.ls-net.com/m0n0wall-watchguard/ (Hardware seems to be a bit weak though and remember you'll need 128 mb ram at least).
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thanks jmcentire and ridnhard19 and pfsense guys…just finished installing pfsense on a watchguard and swapping it in place of my old pfsense box
works great, what a deal..
to those who were wondering about the noise, it is kinda noisy with the 3 fans in the back, compared to a silent embedded device. and be sure to use the hard drive 'cage' if you do a laptop hard drive install like I did, if you just lay the hard drive on the motherboard its likely to short something out and not boot (happened to me)
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supposedly the mini pci VPN accelerator card is based on the SafeNet SafeXcel 1141 which according to the product brief:
http://www.safenet-inc.com/Library/3/SafeXcel-1141_ProductBrief.pdf"Full driver support is available for
development on the most common Operating
Systems, including Windows, Linux,
VxWorks, NetBSD, and FreeBSD. Additional
OS driver support can be delivered
upon request."says the 1141 is supported in FreeBSD
maybe 1.3 will recognize it ? or maybe we need a diff kernel option compiled in?
driver info-
http://www.mirbsd.org/htman/sparc/man4/safe.htm -
http://www.freebsd.org/releases/6.2R/hardware-i386.html#CRYPTO-ACCEL
It says the SafeNet 1141 is supported already, but still doesn't show up in pfSense.
BTW so far have been running two of these x700/pfsense boxes for a few months in a production environment. No problems whatsoever!
Thanks
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just had to physically reset my firebox as all network connectivity was lost for no apparent reason :-\ although the LCD was still cycling as normal and the box seemed "alive" (blinking network lights, lcd). but pings, ssh logins, or internet traffic were all frozen
I would have checked the status or rebooted cleanly via serial console, but that brings me to my question.. I am able to see the freebsd bootup sequence for pfsense over a null modem serial connection to my firebox x500, but once bootup is complete and the "beep" sounds, the serial console seems to 'die', and is unresponsive to keyboard input, nor does it update the display on hyperterminal
also I don't see any POST bios/bootup info over the serial console (before the OS starts loading), like I do with my soekris net4501. I only get info over serial once the freebsd kernel bootstraps and it stops once pfsense finishes booting. I'm guessing I might see the BIOS POST if I installed a pci video card, but I haven't messed with that. Maybe if I did install one, I could get into bios setup and fix my serial console issue?
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Try to check the serial port option at system>advanced and see if that makes a difference for the console. The other issue sounds like you maybe have been running out of states. If that is the case you can bump up that value too at system>advanced.
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Try to check the serial port option at system>advanced and see if that makes a difference for the console. The other issue sounds like you maybe have been running out of states. If that is the case you can bump up that value too at system>advanced.
duh, I can't believe I missed the serial console option, thanks.
I upped the states to 50,000. I previously had it set to 30,000, although I've never seen it get near that high before. Hopefully it was just a fluke
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well I've had to reboot my Watchguard 3 times now, I've narrowed down the problem..
in the system logs right before the "lockups", you see "re1 watchdog timeout" repeated serveral times.
from searching the forum, looks like ridnhard19 also had these problems with this firebox..
I issued "echo "hint.acpi.0.disabled=1" >> /boot/loader.conf" in the console and hopefully that will fix this -
If "re1" is one of your interfaces then you might want to use a new cable on it.
Hardware issues (like a bad cable) are much more likely to happen when a system is used over a longer time than suddenly failing for ACPI settings.Just a thought.
Edit:
@Valhalla1:… just finished installing pfsense on a watchguard ...
OK, forget about this. It seems to be a new install.
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Valhalla1: that "re1 watchdog timeout" message you are getting, I received that also, found out it was the switch the firebox was plugged into. Changed to a different switch and haven't seen that message again, BTW current uptime counter is at 34 days on two of my pfsense/fireboxes.
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I just did some testing with the hardware on these things, they currently have a 1.2 Ghz Celeron processor. I swapped it out with a 1.4 Ghz Pentium 3:
Copyright
1992-2007 The FreeBSD Project.
Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
FreeBSD is a registered trademark of The FreeBSD Foundation.
FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE-p11 #0: Sun Feb 24 16:38:29 EST 2008
sullrich@builder6.pfsense.com:/usr/obj.pfSense/usr/src/sys/pfSense_wrap.6
Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz quality 0
CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) III CPU family 1400MHz (1403.19-MHz 686-class CPU)
Origin = "GenuineIntel" Id = 0x6b1 Stepping = 1
Features=0x383f9ff <fpu,vme,de,pse,tsc,msr,pae,mce,cx8,sep,mtrr,pge,mca,cmov,pat,pse36,mmx,fxsr,sse>Works perfectly! So if you have any old p3s laying around, swap em out and get a little more performance! Also these boards do support 512 MB sticks of PC133, so as soon as I find some I will be upgrading that as well.Does anyone know a way to test the performance difference between the two such as ipsec encryption speed or anything?</fpu,vme,de,pse,tsc,msr,pae,mce,cx8,sep,mtrr,pge,mca,cmov,pat,pse36,mmx,fxsr,sse>
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For benchmarking use a setup like this:
host1–---pfSense1------(ipsec)----bench-pfsense----host2
- host1 and host2 have to be able to generate traffic that can keep the ipsec encryption busy (more traffic than it actually can handle)
- pfSense1 has to be faster than the bench-pfsense or you will measure the wrong machine
- only use crossovercables between all the machines to reduce othe factors like switches or loaded networks
Once you have set this up use tools like netio or iperf to pump traffic from host2 to host1 and modify the hardware of your banch-pfsense. You also can play around with different encryptions as some are faster and some are slower.
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After reading this topic I also revived 2 old WG Firebox X series boxes I had lying around. Install went very smooth, and everything seemed to be working very well.
Untill I found out the box runs very unstable…
Network throughput is very unpredictable, sometimes up to 6Mbit but mostly about 512kbit where it should be close to 100Mbit (other 100Mbit network devices connected through cat5e)
Network traffic often comes to a complete stop for either a few seconds or untill I reboot the box, and strange enough I can trigger this in a few ways like 'trying to open the webgui from the WAN side of the firewall' or "start a large download". Once this occurs, the box stops answering all network traffic, I can't even ping it anymore. Most of the times, once I stop the download or close the browser that is trying to open the webgui, the box starts answering to ping requests right away again.Like in the other Watchguard threads on this forum, this seems to be related to the "kernel: re0: watchdog timeout" error that shows up in the logs at the time the symptoms occur.
From what I've read, it has to do with hardware issues concerning the network cards ?I've searched the forums and google, and found a few 'solutions' suggested by other people with the same issues:
- disable ACPI using 'echo hint.acpi.0.disabled="1" >> /boot/loader.conf' -> didn't help
- enable device polling -> after this, once the watchdog issue occures the firewall always stops answering network traffic untill a power cycle, quite anoying
- throw out the NICs, replace them with NICs using other chipset -> unfortunately, on this Watchguard hardware that is quite difficult, these are 6 onboard realtek based nics
- disable "plug and play OS" in the BIOS -> unfortunately the watchguard mobo doesn't have a keyboard connector, so I can't get in the bios.
- use the SMP kernel in stead of the uniprocessor kernel -> I'm running on the embedded kernel because the firebox only has serial input/output in stead of vga/kb.
I have three questions actually:
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How do I switch to the SMP kernel without losing the serial console ? How can I do this from within pfsense, without reinstalling the entire device ?
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Callout to the other people using watchguard hardware for pfsense, does this watchdog timeout error occur on all fireboxes with pfsense ?
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Does anybody have any other suggestions I can try ?
(That's 4 questions actually :) )
This is a big problem since the box is just unusable now, and I'd really like to get pfsense on it.
Small Update: This occurs on both fireboxes with pfsense on them, in completely different environments, connected to different switches, different cabling.
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Right now I have 3 x700s running, so far have not had a problem. I used to receive the watchdog timeout errors when it was connected to any netgear hub or switch(tried 4 different ones). Once I removed the netgear switches(plugged directly into cable modem and an HP procurv switch) the errors were gone. However when I was getting the watchdog timeout error it still never caused any problems(currently my 3rd x700 is still plugged into a netgear switch and continually gets those errors). So maybe if we find some differences between your install and mine it will help you narrow down the problem.
Did you do a full install onto a HDD or embedded on CF?
What switches are you using? -
Did you do a full install onto a HDD or embedded on CF?
What switches are you using?I'm having these issues on 2 firebox units, let's call the firebox 1 and firebox 2 for now.
Firebox 1 is a full install on a 1GB CF card using a usb cf reader and a laptop with the livecd, installed through option 99, selected the embedded kernel at kernel selection, plugged the CF card into the firebox after install.
It is connected to a cisco catalyst 3550 on one of the FastEthernet 100Mbit ports.Firebox 2 is a full install on a 2.5" hard drive, installed identically the same way.
This one is connected to a cheap 16port table switch but I can't remember the brand right now (I'll try to get back on that later tonight)Both units have the lcdd process installed to show cpu and memory stats on the firebox lcd display, installed as described in http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,7920.msg46356.html#msg46356 . Would this be causing an issue ?
Strange thing is I ran firebox1 on my home network for about 3 hours while installing and configuring it, and did not notice these errors at that time. However, I can't say for sure they weren't there, maybe I just didn't notice them since I didn't run any traffic through the box.
Thanks a lot for helping me on this !
UPDATE: Testing stuff is a bit difficult since both boxes are on remote locations (which is exactly why this is such an annoying problem :) ) but I'll try to drive over there tomorrow and see if the problem persists when I plug my laptop straight into firebox 2 in stead of through the desktop switch. We should be able to confirm/rule out a switch problem then.
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I am also running lcdd, but not the way "ridnhard19" did it(check my post a few down: http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,7920.msg46902.html#msg46902).
Is your 1GB CF card a microdrive or regular flash mem?
Looks like we installed them the same way, did you have to change the partition information in /etc/fstab? If so did you also change your swap partition to the correct drive?
I was thinking the watchdog error might have been from just using cheap switches, but the cisco rules that out.
I don't have many other ideas, 2 of mine have been up for over a month running a couple ipsec tunnels, carp, squid, squidguard, and handling quite a bit of traffic(about 3-4 voip calls, 4-5 terminal server sessions, large file transfers, and some web browsing all at the same time) and it doesn't seem to slow down at all.
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Is your 1GB CF card a microdrive or regular flash mem?
Looks like we installed them the same way, did you have to change the partition information in /etc/fstab? If so did you also change your swap partition to the correct drive?The CF card is a normal CF card, not a microdrive. I know this is not recommended and I plan to change this over time. The reason I installed it like this is that I originally thought picking the 'embedded kernel' during install also meant having a read only filesystem like on the embedded images. I found out after installation that it is not, but didn't bother reinstalling yet. Figured it'd be a nice test to see how long the CF card lasts. (CF cards are cheap nowadays anyways, this one was 6 euro)
On the partition information, yes I had to change them after install, and I also changed the swap partition info on firebox 2.
The correct setting on firebox 2 (with the 2.5" hard drive) was /dev/ad2s1a for the root fs and /dev/ad2s1b for the swap.
Firebox 1 needed /dev/ad0s1a since it is running from a CF card.
Firebox 1 however doesn't have a swap partition since I manually removed that during install. (I figured using swap on a CF card would be really overdoing it :) )So far I can't really think of anything we did different. Tomorrow evening I'm going over to firebox 2 to test whether the problem also occurs using just a network cable, without being connected to the switch. I'll post an update while testing it.
