Successful Install on Watchguard Firebox X700!

[gsiener]

Hi all.  Just ordered an x700 and am eager to jump into things.  I'd prefer to run this off a cf card vs. a hard drive, but can't tell from the previous posts if you can run pfsense off a cf card alone?

How big is the advantage of using a microdrive vs. a standard cf card (or rather, one of the speedier cf cards)?

[wallabybob]

I've been using a 1GB Solid State Disk Module (see http://www.memoryc.com/transcend/ts1gdom40v-s.html and http://ec.transcendusa.com/product/ItemDetail.asp?ItemID=TS1GDOM40V-S) for my pfSense system for about 14 months now.

Some microdrives have been made to work with pfSense, others have been problematical. The disk module I used was cheaper than any microdrive I was able to find at the time.

[gsiener]

Sorry, just one more clarification:

Is anyone able to run pfsense off a cf card that's connected via Watchguard's standard cf interface (e.g., nothing attached via IDE)?

[louis-m]

mine runs fine. i broke the seal on the compact flash on the watchguard and replaced it with a 2gb compact flash card (embedded install) and it boot straight away. installed the lcproc and everything is working fine.

[Unubtanium]

I am trying to do the same thing has other people have done here, but i am stuck.
I can not telnet in to the device.  i have tried with Putty, cmd telnet and hyper terminal.
Do anyone have a quick way to check if the com port is broken?

[geewhz01]

@Unubtanium:

I am trying to do the same thing has other people have done here, but i am stuck.
I can not telnet in to the device.  i have tried with Putty, cmd telnet and hyper terminal.
Do anyone have a quick way to check if the com port is broken?

Did you install the embedded version?

[Unubtanium]

Yupp, installed the embedded version.  and i am using the correct settings that are in post 1.
It say's in post 1, that the cable used it the watchguard's one.  Is this any special cable?
I only have a standard cisco cable at my hands u c.   
I have tried to connect to the coms port even with the original watchguard software running, but no joy.
Therefor i think that coms port is busted or they are using a weird cable.  ???  ???

this is annoying, for this is the only thing that holds me from getting a sweet 6 port firewall.
Is there any other way i can edit and configure the pfsense files on the HHD so that it boots up and have one port configured with an ip and bound to port 1 as lan so that i access it by the web GUI?????

[Unubtanium]

maybe someone have a little Ghost image file with standard settings that  i can slap on my hdd for this unit.
And in this way i will get past my com problem(i think) ;D

[Unubtanium]

WoooHoo..  DID it, IT Was the stupid cable.  8)

[louis-m]

Upon testing, I did have the watchdog timeout issue with the x500. downloaded the latest nightly build 1.2.3 (2 weeks ago) and all is well….. as solid as a rock. noisy things though and disconnecting the 3 fans on the back makes the box fairly hot so they are reconnected and sitting in a cabinet.

[Unubtanium]

Have anyone played around to get the armed light to turn green??

[jojitd]

Hello All,

I hope it's not to much to ask , can someone please post a step by step guide on how to install pfsense on a firebox unit, i know it's posted at the first page of this topic but for a beginners point of view (like me i find it hard ) Thanks for your consideration.!!! :)

[dglacey]

With thanks to all the contributors to this thread, I have pfSense running on my X700 (embedded copy on CF card, with memory upgrade and quieter fans).

I have a 50Mbps cable broadband connection.  When I connect  the modem direct to a PC I get 45-48Mbps downloads.  When I connect the PC to the LAN port of the X700 and the cable modem to a WAN port, I get 14-15Mpbs download speeds.  Speedtests all done at the same time with a speedtest approved by the ISP (VirginMedia) for testing these connections.

Is this a result of limits on the WAN=>LAN throughput of the X700 or a lack of horsepower?

I have tried the same test with a Draytek 3300v router and get speeds of 27-30Mbps (although the published throughput limit on this device is 50Mbps).

The router provided by the ISP is a Netgear WNR2000, but this does not have multi-WAN support (I have two additional ADSL2+ connections).

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[teh]

Reading this topic has helped me understand the firebox a bit more! We use these at work and have acquired one for experimental purposes.

I'm a bit confused to where the keyboard connector is however. It was pretty obvious on the Firebox II.

Anyone able to give me a photo or something of their board diagramming it ?

Cheers

[dglacey]

I have found the answer to the problem of the WAN=>LAN throughput.

I disabled all the traffic shaping and immediately got 50Mbps download speeds.

I re-enabled traffic shaping but only to give VoIP priority to the VoIP adapter on the network, and still got the higher speed.

So, the problem seems to lie in the extra workload involved in traffic shaping.

Also, in response to an earlier question as to whether you need to do adjust any settings to upgrade the CPU, I have just installed a PIII 1.4GHz and it worked fine without changing anything else.

In answer to the immediately previous post about the keyboard connector, I think there are some earlier posts in this thread on this subject that provide the wiring diagram for the keyboard.

Now, all I need is a beginner's guide to getting the LCD to work on an embedded CF install and I can move on to the next project!

[teh]

I have a ps2 header that I can move the main board pins around on.

Pin 1 +DATA Data
Pin 2 Not connected Not connected*
Pin 3 GND Ground
Pin 4 Vcc +5 V DC at 275 mA
Pin 5 +CLK Clock
Pin 6 Not connected Not connected**

Following that, which pins there do I connect to which pins on the board…. its driving me up the wall trying to get my head around this as I can't make sense of that ascii drawing.

Is this a non-standard keyboard connector?

[teh]

@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

–----------------------
  : : : : : : : : : : : : : :       FD

FireBox x500 motherboard
                       X       X --        p1          
                       X X X X   |
                                    |_________________________________________                                  
                                    |     6no Cables
                                    |
                                    |             This is the underside of old motherboard            
                p6    X       X --
                       X X X X

Front face of PS2

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

Any ideas in response the the above quoted post and my previous post? I really want to get going with this project I have lined up but can't as the keyboard when connected following the two guides on this topic cause the keyboard to act as if its got a stuck key (which it hasn't as I've tried two working keyboards)

And following this example here is what causes the "stuck key issue"

   1             NC
     \_ .     ._/
        . . . .
        / | | \
       /  | |  4
      /   | NC
     /    3
    2

              NC
   1__.   .__/
 2__.   |   .__NC

    3__. .__4

Braided bare wire, which is connected to the outer ring on a male PS2 connector, is chassis ground.

NC == no connection

[High Spirit]

@jmcentire:

2. Hooked up a notebook drive to my machine, booted from Live CD (1.2 RC3)
8. Couldn't mount drive(since installed on different machine), so it asks what you want to mount enter: ufs:ad2s1a
9. Boots up into pfSense just fine!
10. Get into the web interface, "Diagnostics", "Edit File"
11. Load "/etc/fstab"
12. Change the old drive information to the correct one(ad2s1a & ad2s1b).

The mini ide connector on the X700's MB is the secondary ide controller. If you hook up the hard drive as secondary master, these steps will not be nessessary.  ;D

On my install system, I connected the hard drive to the secondary controller on the motherboard and installed from the Live CD which was plugged into the primary controller. pfSense booted without issue first time when the drive was plugged into the X700!

ad1s1a = Primary Master
ad2s1a = Secondary Master

I finally made use of this box which has been lying around for over a year!!! Thanks…

I've got a number of mini-PCI wireless cards out of dead notebooks which I will try tonight. I post my results :)

[bruor]

I am attempting to do this on an X700 now,  I've modified the drive tray so I can mount a laptop IDE drive in it, installed to it as secondary master in another machine, and now attached the drive to the onboard header.   I am using an 80GB WD scorpio blue drive.

I'm attempting to attach to the system via serial to watch it boot and perhaps configure it, however, I can't see any output.

Do I need a straight through or null modem serial cable?  the cable I am attempting to use at the moment has part number 5184-1894 on it.

I get random garbled text via the serial connection when using 9600 8-n-1-hardware via hyperterminal when booting the watchguard CF card.  Do I need to boot the HD installation and configure the serial console option before installing the drive in the firebox?

UPDATE: I think I may have located the issue, I selected the Single-proc kernel while installing instead of embedded.  I will re-try the installation using the embedded kernel and update the thread with results.

[bruor]

Another successful firebox conversion here!

Installed the laptop drive in a desktop as secondary master, installed pfsense full version with EMBEDDED kernel. 
Just finished watching the console bootup successfully without an issue at all detecting and booting from the transplanted HD.

I will upload some pictures of how I modified the drive cage to hold the laptop drive.

Now just to get the LCD to work and display useful information!