Successful Install on Watchguard Firebox X700!

CryoGenID

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

2low4zero

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.

MMan

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

@CryoGenID:

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.

Darkk

@GruensFroeschli:

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

gpouser

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

drallibor

zerolost

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?

drallibor

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.

zerolost

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!

gpouser

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 ?

CryoGenID

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

jahonix

@gpouser:

Shows Cables
Keypad: 1448-00x - Flat 1x4 cable; 1.77 in.; 1 ea.
Is it possible to use this for 4 pin for keyboard

Don't think so.
The keypad it references are the four buttons from the front, not a complete keyboard.

CryoGenID

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

gpouser

Hi Chris,

Get down to basics, check that the CF card holder has no bent pins - remove ram then re-seat. If you did anything with the CPU remove heat sink and take out the cpu check thermal paste is not over flow and re-fit.

Try to connect a serial cable onto the box via the com port and see what happens in terminal.

I think there are some pins on the board that set the clock rate of Vt and cpu freq

One way to clear cmos remove batt: power up then remove power cord from the back of unit leave for 15min the replace batt fix back the power cord and power up from wall socket switch

For video output you need a VGA pci card but for this you may need to remove the motherboard. I still do not have pinout's for the firefox x500 keyboard but may need to do some volt testing on the six pins next to what look likes a IDE slot top middle.

The output on the LCD maybe controlled by the config file in the OS on boot up I think

/etc/grub/menu.lst may hold a line on the kernel

Hope this helps

drallibor

I did put a video card in my x1000 using a 1u pci riser card I got off ebay. The keyboard connector on the motherboard of the x1000 is a standard ps2 kb connector, nothing special. It was relatively easy to wire up a connector I removed from an old mother board to the watchguard. I made the cable long enough so that eventually I would be able to mount it out the back of the unit. The video card fit ok with the entire drive bay assembly removed. Theoretically you could put a wireless card in here that pfsense would support as an access point.. or usb ports.. whatever. I mostly wanted the video card so I could easily install ubuntu on the box.

More info on the keyboard connector
This place isnt far from me. http://www.cablesandconnectors.com

They have on this page http://www.cablesandconnectors.com/PIX/CC-085.pdf item BRK-PS2-2x4 which I believe is the exact part if you dont want to go through the hassle of building a cable yourself. If you feel like building one.. well, they have the parts for that too.

The 1u riser card I bought is a reverse direction or Right angle card so that cards hang over the motherboard. You could I guess get a normal left angle card and cut a slot in the side of the case. This would allow you for diagnostic purposes easy access to cards for temporary purposes. It was approx 5$ off ebay from a store called Knightdiscounts. If there was one available I would try and get a flush mount reverse 1u so that the card almost sits flat on the pci connector instead of the quarter inch that mine does. That little bit would look better in the flip down bay on the outside of the x1000.

Somebody said something about onboard video. THere is none one the x1000. There is a place on the motherboard where they have a video connector marked out, but all the chips necessary to make it run are missing and solder filled. Possibly on later models they have it, but on mine its not there.

gpouser

Thanks for this info, just got hold of left hand side u2 riser card from old server. Have the U connector ready but this is what I need to understand

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Front face of PS2

Have you soldered the cables in this patterns "1 > 1" - "2 > 2" - "3 > 3" - "4 > 4" - ditto

drallibor

correct.. soldered the wires like an extension cable off the motherboard. 1=1 2=2.. etc.

drallibor

2u riser card might not fit with the cover on. be perfect for doing an install though.

Magnacus

@jmcentire:

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>

Hi,

I tried that too, but my Firebox isn't booting.
Did you just swap the CPU? Had you to change anything, like setting a jumper or so?

(My P3 is a PIII-S SL6BY, 1400Mhz, 512KB, 133Mhz Bus, 1,45V)

EDIT: My Board is a WG-X66 AV1.0B

Phil

Great tutorial. I had some major issues, however, during setup.

I installed from the live cd after putting the laptop drive into an old laptop. I then booted from it and cu (Linux serial console tool) repeatedly disconnected from the serial. This (I guess) missed the mount point option and made the boot fail with an invalid mount. I eventually ended up booting back into the live cd and modifying fstab from the terminal there. Once I did this, the box booted ok but cu continued to disconnect. I connected it up to my other machine and used puTTY, which didn't have such problems.

Moral of the story is, don't use cu.

Regardless, it's working fine now. Next step is to look at swapping out the CPU and upgrading the memory.

Phil

Successful Install on Watchguard Firebox X700!

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