Successful Install on Watchguard Firebox X700!
-
Wow this unbelievable, I came to this thread looking for hardware recommendations to put pfSense 2.0 on, to REPLACE our firebox x500 and I see you guys are talking about putting pfSense ON the firebox. That's uber cool. Can someone tell me if this will work for 2.0 on the x500, all the instructs I see are for 1.2?
I will trash that watchguard "OS" in no time. -
That's uber cool
It is pretty sweet! ;D
2.0 works almost as well as 1.2.3 did. Some users have experience an odd bug where the serial console fails to come up after the bootup messages. There is work around for that though.
The NICs in the Firebox X-Core are low quality Realtek and can cause problems. You may see 'watchdog timeout' in the logs and the NICs stop responding. This seems largely dependent on what you have it connected to. A good quality switch that only sends 'nice' packets seems least problematic.
You may as well give it a go since you already have the box. :)Steve
-
And presumably it then fails to boot (no access via ssh or web gui)?
To be honest I have no ideas. :( I've not tried installing to HD on one of these boxes. I also haven't tried using the embedded kernel option.
Is there an 'enable serial console' option in that configuration? It could be defaulting to VGA for some reason and then failing to find any VGA hardware (that shouldn't stop it booting though).
There is no need to use the embedded kernel if you are installing to HD. However if you do a full install you will need to boot the install in another machine and select serial console in the web gui.Steve
Hi,
I had to go with embedded kernel otherwise serial does not work when first time booted. Before first restart I edited /etc/fstab to mount after restart ad2s1a and ad2s1b partition.
So now even though I still got unreadable serial connection, webGUI works fine and SSH as well.P.S. Steve, your LCD instructions worked perfect :)
Thank you all.
-
The NICs in the Firebox X-Core are low quality Realtek and can cause problems. You may see 'watchdog timeout' in the logs and the NICs stop responding. This seems largely dependent on what you have it connected to. A good quality switch that only sends 'nice' packets seems least problematic.
I can confirm this!! Damn stupid cheap NIC's, someone did put a cheap D-link Swithc in on my opt3 and i did se this "problem", Changed it for a HP ProCurve so lets hope this fixes my "problem"…... ;D
-
Interesting, anybody try it with 3com Superstack III's ?
The NICs in the Firebox X-Core are low quality Realtek and can cause problems. You may see 'watchdog timeout' in the logs and the NICs stop responding. This seems largely dependent on what you have it connected to. A good quality switch that only sends 'nice' packets seems least problematic.
I can confirm this!! Damn stupid cheap NIC's, someone did put a cheap D-link Swithc in on my opt3 and i did se this "problem", Changed it for a HP ProCurve so lets hope this fixes my "problem"…... ;D
-
Interesting, anybody try it with 3com Superstack III's ?
Will check tomorrow if i have one and test for u, but also let u all know if the ProCurve works fine, just changed it today so tomorrow will tell… ;D
-
The HP Procurve did the trick, no more "dead" OPT3 Nic. Do not have a 3com so can not test it… But all points to Cheap shitty switches freak out the cheap realtek NIC
-
I remember reading about this some time ago unfortunately I have forgotten most of the detail and can't find the page now! ::)
Anyway it had something to do with fragmented packets.
Basically a cheap 'dumb' switch send any old packet towards the firebox where as a smart switch does a much better job of reassembling bad packets correctly. However that really deppends on the switch software so some are better than others.There has been a lot of work gone into this over the years. Hopefully with the first 2.1 builds based on FreeBSD 9 there may be some resolution.
Steve
-
I remember reading about this some time ago unfortunately I have forgotten most of the detail and can't find the page now! ::)
Anyway it had something to do with fragmented packets.
Basically a cheap 'dumb' switch send any old packet towards the firebox where as a smart switch does a much better job of reassembling bad packets correctly. However that really deppends on the switch software so some are better than others.There has been a lot of work gone into this over the years. Hopefully with the first 2.1 builds based on FreeBSD 9 there may be some resolution.
Steve
Lets hope 2.1 will do its magic, but for now i am looking for a x550e that i can test on because the other is in production environment doing 3 wans with failover and load balance with 2 lans too =)
Thanks again Steve for teaching me,, Did wish i had your Skills
-
Trying to install this on X500, someone mentioned it being same hw as the other X seires, I read somewhere I had to flash new firmware to allow it to boot > 512mb CF card, is this correct?
http://documentation.dbernhardt.com/pfsense/article.htmlX750EB2.BIN or does it have to be X500?
-
Trying to install this on X500, someone mentioned it being same hw as the other X seires, I read somewhere I had to flash new firmware to allow it to boot > 512mb CF card, is this correct?
http://documentation.dbernhardt.com/pfsense/article.htmlX750EB2.BIN or does it have to be X500?
No, an X500 should be able to boot from anything without any BIOS modifications. Just try installing a nanobsd image of pfSense onto a CF and give it a try.
-
I will be trying to boot form 2gb CF card (or any size, I just need to know what is the highest size CF I can use on the X500)
Thanks!
-
Mmm, yes that article you linked to is a bit confusing. It doesn't specify which Firebox it's for.
Like Brak said, there's no need to flash the bios. There should be no restriction on the CF size however there is no advantage to using a larger one. 1GB is fine.Steve
-
Mmm, yes that article you linked to is a bit confusing. It doesn't specify which Firebox it's for.
Like Brak said, there's no need to flash the bios. There should be no restriction on the CF size however there is no advantage to using a larger one. 1GB is fine.Steve
Great news guys, thanks! Will be doing this very soon when I get my 2gb CF in. In re: to size, wouldn't it be better for logging if I had a bigger sized one?
-
All logging in pfSense is done to RAM. In the NanoBSD install almost nothing is written to the CF card other than config changes. This done to preserve the card due to it's limited write cycles.
If you need extensive logging or long term log storage you have to use a separate syslog server.From a personal point of view this is the one part of pfSense that I find lacking. At home I don't have another machine that's always on so running a syslog server is not an option.
About the only possible advantage of using a bigger CF card is that there are more memory blocks to use for ware leveling. However since NanoBSD is especially designed to get around this it's not really a problem.
You do get more space for packages but you won't fill it anyway.
Steve
-
I agree with you. Sucks we cant log to cf… I prob wont be running any pckgs. I do have an unRAID box I can store logs to.... Hmmmm... And maybe I could run sickbeard, couchpotato, sabnzbd, transmizzion on the firebox..? Even still I wont fill up even a gig cf...
-
I agree with you. Sucks we cant log to cf… I prob wont be running any pckgs. I do have an unRAID box I can store logs to.... Hmmmm... And maybe I could run sickbeard, couchpotato, sabnzbd, transmizzion on the firebox..? Even still I wont fill up even a gig cf...
What about using a 2.5" hard drive, I thought that was the recommended method? Can you get persistent logs that way? (Mine just came will be attempting setup soon..)
-
To be consistent across the install versions, all log only to ram. Though I should point out that I have only ever done a HD install as an experiment.
The only way to have persistent and extensive logging on the box is to run a syslog server directly on pfSense. There are some instructions on the forum on how to do that but I've never tried it and it's not a supported configuration.This seems like it could be a great package. Perhaps a bounty could be raised?
Steve
-
Well, I will post results after the 2gb CF card arrives.
Right now I have mwall running on the 64mb CF that came with, but it's missing a LOT of nifty stuff I've seen on pfSense! No sense in running fware when there is no support and limitations..! And talk about no webgui! :D
-
Hi All.
After many years of running older versions of pfSense, I've run into a bit of a problem installing 2.0.x on my Firebox X8000.
I've been running 1.2.3 RC1 from a 2G CF card with no issues for some time. I've put off upgrading to version 2 as I've got a customized bandwidthd installation on a USB flash drive to contend with, but tried to swap over today.
The problem that I have is with booting. I've tried a few different images (2.0, 2.0.1, 512MB, 2GB) and don't get serial output or any substantial disk I/O, according to the "Storage" activity light. I've also tried the FreeDOS BIOS utility image that Steve posted in the X-Peak thread to no avail. I'm able to duplicate the content of my 1.2.3RC1 CF and boot from the replacement card fine, so the media seems OK.
Checking these boards for information on 2.x installs on the Firebox platform I was pleasantly surprised by the goldmine of technical information that has been shared about the X-Peak series! The hard-won experience on this forum is that it should "just work". I'm hoping someone here has a hunch as to what my issue may be…
I've compared MBRs and I've noticed that the partitioning scheme and boot code is different between my 1.2.3 install and the new version 2 images. My suspicion is that the BIOS is being finicky about the bootstrapping process... My first aim is to get a BIOS tool into a bootable CF image.
Any thoughts?
EDIT: I've checked the old images and discovered that the switch to nanobsd happened in the 1.2.3 RELEASE image and that RC1 was the old 'embedded' image. If its feasible enough, I may try to instrument the newer bootloader to mark progress (perhaps by flashing an LED or using BIOS disk write functions?). I'm also hoping to get a spare flash chip or two and a compatible writer to extract and modify the BIOS firmware -- looks to be a standard PLCC 'though I didn't remove the version label before re-racking the Firebox. If anyone has chip details, I'd be much obliged :)
Thanks.
- Shanon
