Successful Install on Watchguard Firebox X700!
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Wow what a great thing ;D
The question I now have is:
Does this also work with a FireBox Core x750e ?
I have one standing around here and would like to use it with pfSense…
It has a lot of CPU-Power, 8 GBit-Ports...I have just tried to boot the Live-CD, install it onto a normal ATA-HDD and
plug that one into the standard IDE-Port of the Firebox and connect via
Serial-Port to my PC...
But unfortunately I don't see anything on HyperTerminal.If you connect your Firebox and for example don't put any HDD's/CF-Cards
into your box do you see anything via the serial connection?Thanks a lot for your help!
I hope we can get this running ;D
Best regards,
Chris
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Update:
I have just read the part (missed it somehow in the first place) with the
Linksys-Serial-Cable (with which I tried it g), so I have now used
another serial-cable (in German: "Nullmodemkabel"), but I only
get scrambled output (see attached picture) from the original
Watchguard-CF-Card.Does anybody know what is wrong here?
I've tried to change the handshake (Hardware, none), speed (9600, 19800, 56000)…
But I always get this scrambled output...
Help please ;)
Thanks and best regards,
Chris
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First, forget about HyperTerminal and get TeraTerm Pro:
http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA002416/teraterm.htmlLooks like you're using wrong emulation.
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Also did you make sure that your flow control is set to "none" and NOT to hardware or Xon/Xoff
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Thanks for your replies!
I've just solved it…
It was the speed of the serial console, I had to set it to 115200...
If I used a slower speed, only that garbage could be seen... Now I can see it :-)I'll now try to get pfsense working on it :-)
Thanks again!!!
Best regards,
Chris
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Ok, Update again:
It is really depressing…
Using the original Watchguard-CF-Card I can see the Serial Output, but NO Output from
pfSense :-(
I have tried the liveCD and used the embedded kernel and have also tried to flash the
embedded image via physdiscwrite...
If I attach the CF-Card to a Vmware-VM, I can see the BootLoader booting and then
(of course) nothing more as it switches to serial console output...
But using the FireBox, I get nothing at all via the serial port (using 115200 and 9800 bps)...
The Display of the FB says "Booting OS...." ...Do you have any other thoughts to get this finally running? :-)
Thanks and best regards,
Chris
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Do you not get any serial output at all from the x700?
Did you install the embedded or normal image? I just installed the standard image on my microdrive, changed the bootloader and fstab slightly (as detailed earlier in the thread) and away it went.
Could be the card you're using isn't compatible with the firebox - as noted in one of my previous posts, I had a 5GB card that just would not work (and the LCD would show some bios settings).
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Hey :-)
I installed both images and selected the embedded kernel when I used the normal image…
But I don't get any output at all...
But this is a X1250e, and not a X700 ;-)
I am using a 2 GB CF-Card... But I could try to use another 1 GB Card and see what happens ;-)
Any other ideas?
I gues noone has a schematic for a VGA and KB-Cable (for which the Mainboard of the X1250e
has connectors)?Thanks and best regards,
Chris
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I've been catching up on this thread and doing some of my own experimentation. I've installed PFSense 1.2 and 1.2.1 on an X700 using an 8GB Transcend 2.5" SSD, a 30GB Fujita 2.5" HDD, and a SanDisk 128MB CF card. I have the following questions and observations to pose to the group;
-The SafeNet crypto accelerator isn't recognised by the OS at this point. Anyone have any success stories here?
-The Soekris VPN1411 (HiFN 7955) is recognized but fails to load. (I have saved the output of 'dmesg' if anyone is interested in how the hifn is failing.) Again, any success stories?
-Any success stories regarding fan replacement on the processor so that it doesn't sound like a 747 preparing to taxi?
-Anyone have any positive experiences with Mini-PCI type III form factor wireless cards that are recognized by FreeBSD7? I'm thinking of salvaging an Atheros ar45xx mini-pci card out of a WG X15 Edge box and placing it in the X700.
-For that matter, has anyone successfully reprogrammed the TSOP (Intel Flash) on an X15 to take an embedded load? Or is the BIOS on that box hopelessly borked? I have two X15s and they look hopeless shy of scavenging the Atheros wireless cards and antennae out of them…
-My preference is still a mini-tower piece-o-crap HP destop P4 2.x GHz box for best price/size/performance ratio. The WG X700 is still too pricey unless you can score one on eBay for 50 bucks.
Also, the performance difference between FreeBSD5/6 and FreeBSD7 is gi-normous. Good call to update the OS in the PFSense 1.2.1 tree. The differences on the X700 running even a simple home network are quite noticeable. FreeBSD7 is back to where it was, performance-wise, in the 4.x days. Thanks guys. Again, good call.
Which brings up one more thing: Watchdog timeouts. I had problems with watchdog timeouts on FreeBSD 5.4, 6.1, and 6.3 using only IPF, not PFSense, for many many months. FreeBSD7 seems better about this than the 6 tree did. But here's something to consider; While switching infrastructure and cable lengths are important, please consider keeping track of the interface types that have these problems. I've had problems with dc0, rl0, xl0, bge0, em0, and fxp0, but mostly with dc[0|1|2|3] on the Xilinx (sp?) quad ethernet cards. Cisco/LinkSys gear seems better behaved in this area but the Joe Itchiban / Suzi Won / off-brand switching gear always seems to cause problems with watchdog timeouts. Just my 2 cents. (Yeah, I know, this is probably in the wrong place…)
One last thing: The slow PFSense management traffic on em0 or em1 appears to be a reproducible event for me, even on non-Intel hardware. Ethernet chipsets are the key here. (Again, wrong thread.)
Okay, so... all of that said, who's interested in more experimentation and what would you like to see done next? I'm sticking with PFSense 1.2.1 going forward, but what other embedded systems and hardware would YOU like to see explored? I'm about ready to move on from the X700 to something else unless I can cut the noise and increase the performance, perhaps with a processor upgrade. Adding the Atheros WiFi card and drilling holes in the back for antennae might be fun to do. But WHAT ELSE could I do with an X700?!?
Thanks for listening, all. Feel free to contact me about my above ramblings if you are so moved.
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One successfull install on X750. Wrote embedded image on original 128mb cf card and it booted fine. Everything seems to work properly so far and even lcd driver for x700 works.
Now I feel tempted to replace original Celeron M 320 with Pentium M 780. ;D
But this is a X1250e, and not a X700 ;-)
X1250 should be identical to X750. So it should work too. I did have small problem with front bezel preventing serial cable to go deep enough.
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I preferr this card http://pcengines.ch/wlm54g23.htm or this card http://pcengines.ch/wlm54sag23.htm depending on if i need 802.11a support or not.
I never had problems with them :)
(except on pfSense 1.0 but that was because of a bad client)…What about Atheros 5212? I have one running in my PC with PFSense 1.2.1 RC2 and seems to be working ok but getting alot of errors so not sure if it's related to this model or not.
Darkk
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Would it be possible to see inside Pic(I will get some of the inside if anyone is interested) plus power supply type.
Found these pictures from other pages - was clicking next page
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i just installed pfsense on a wg x700 that was mothballed; got the load on ok (that was easy indeed) but none of the interfaces show a link; re0 and re1 are said to up 'up' in ifconfig but they also show as 'no carrier' (as do the rest of the interfaces) and there are no link lights on the front of teh unit; i tried trhee different patch cables- is it possible that they have been disabled in BIOS somehow?
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On the x1000 even when the battery was totally dead and the bios was reset the nics still worked, default was on. So, unless somebody put a graphics card in your machine, made a connector to attach a keyboard, and set the it to be disabled then they are working.
I did have a problem getting one test machine I had to connect to the re1 (lan) interface initially. It had a lousy nic in it and no matter what I did it just wouldnt connect. Try a different pc, make sure the pc is set for dhcp, and make sure that you configured re1 on the pf/wg to be the LAN and have dhcp enabled.
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RE: interfaces not linking … (no carrier)
I'M SUCH A NEWB! ... got them to work using a cross-over cable! i'm used to working with switches. :)
getting the front panel display to work would be soooo cool!
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Hi All,
It would be great if I can install PCI video card and install with keyboard attached.
Thanks if anyone can help on this.
Found: please remove the x in the url to view
httpx://www.watchguard.com/docs/corporate/wg_coreDe-MFR_instructions.pdf
There are six pins next to the floppy disk connector label 1 - 6 in a U shape pin out are these the ones for the keyboard, look the same pattern on a ps2 motherboard ?
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Great Document, thanks!
But where would we get this cable?
Does anyone have the pin-settings for an X1250e?Is there also onboard-video for which anybody has the pin-settings so that
we can attach the X1250e directly to an TFT?That would be really great!
Thanks a lot in advance!
Best regards,
Chris
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Shows Cables
Keypad: 1448-00x - Flat 1x4 cable; 1.77 in.; 1 ea.
Is it possible to use this for 4 pin for keyboardDon't think so.
The keypad it references are the four buttons from the front, not a complete keyboard. -
It is a little bit offtopic, but today I wanted to test the pfSense-Installation
again on my X1250e, but the device seems to be broken :(
I did nothing since my last test about a month ago, but now I have
no text written on the LCD and the LEDs (which used to blink somehow while
booting) just all light up steadily and don't blink anymore.
That behavior is also with the original CF-Card from WatchGuard.
CMOS-Reset didn't fix it…Does anybody have any tips? I simply cannot believe the box should be
dead :-/Thanks a lot for your help as I would be really happy to get pfSense working
on the X1250e :-)Best regards,
Chris
