PfSense on a Celestix S-X MSA 4000

nanobot

Excellent work guys,
I almost had given up on getting the LCD to work, but there could be light at the end of the tunnel. :)

@stephenw10:

just read ukbd0 while operating the knob and see what happens.

Could you suggest how to go about that and I’ll give it ago?

Another good feature of these devices is the speed of the fans are controlled by the CPU temperature, unlike some WatchGuard Firebox boxes. ;)

On another note, does anybody know how to remap the network interface ports so they match the front panel?


em0: <intel(r) 1000="" pro="" network="" connection="" 7.3.2="">port 0x8f00-0x8f1f mem 0xfd6e0000-0xfd6fffff irq 16 at device 0.0 on pci1
em0: Using an MSI interrupt
em0: [FILTER]
pcib2: <acpi pci-pci="" bridge="">irq 17 at device 28.1 on pci0
pci2: <acpi pci="" bus="">on pcib2
em1: <intel(r) 1000="" pro="" network="" connection="" 7.3.2="">port 0x7f00-0x7f1f mem 0xfd2e0000-0xfd2fffff irq 17 at device 0.0 on pci2
em1: Using an MSI interrupt
em1: [FILTER]
pcib3: <acpi pci-pci="" bridge="">irq 18 at device 28.2 on pci0
pci3: <acpi pci="" bus="">on pcib3
em2: <intel(r) 1000="" pro="" network="" connection="" 7.3.2="">port 0xdf00-0xdf1f mem 0xfdee0000-0xfdefffff irq 18 at device 0.0 on pci3
em2: Using an MSI interrupt
em2: [FILTER]
pcib4: <acpi pci-pci="" bridge="">irq 19 at device 28.3 on pci0
pci4: <acpi pci="" bus="">on pcib4
em3: <intel(r) 1000="" pro="" network="" connection="" 7.3.2="">port 0xcf00-0xcf1f mem 0xfdce0000-0xfdcfffff irq 19 at device 0.0 on pci4
em3: Using an MSI interrupt
em3: [FILTER]
pcib5: <acpi pci-pci="" bridge="">irq 16 at device 28.4 on pci0
pci5: <acpi pci="" bus="">on pcib5
em4: <intel(r) 1000="" pro="" network="" connection="" 7.3.2="">port 0xaf00-0xaf1f mem 0xfdae0000-0xfdafffff irq 16 at device 0.0 on pci5
em4: Using an MSI interrupt
em4: [FILTER]
pcib6: <acpi pci-pci="" bridge="">irq 17 at device 28.5 on pci0
pci6: <acpi pci="" bus="">on pcib6
em5: <intel(r) 1000="" pro="" network="" connection="" 7.3.2="">port 0x9f00-0x9f1f mem 0xfd8e0000-0xfd8fffff irq 17 at device 0.0 on pci6
em5: Using an MSI interrupt
em5: [FILTER]</intel(r)></acpi></acpi></intel(r)></acpi></acpi></intel(r)></acpi></acpi></intel(r)></acpi></acpi></intel(r)></acpi></acpi></intel(r)>

This is what I am after:-

ifconfig em5 name em0
ifconfig em4 name em1
ifconfig em3 name em2
ifconfig em2 name em3
ifconfig em1 name em4
ifconfig em0 name em5

Also tried, Create file /etc/rc.conf.local
ifconfig_em0_name="LAN"
ifconfig_em1_name="WAN"
ifconfig_em2_name="DMZ1"
ifconfig_em3_name="DMZ2"
ifconfig_em4_name="DMZ3"
ifconfig_em5_name="DMZ4"

This doesn’t appear to work unless I’m doing something wrong!

Thanks in advance for your help.

stephenw10

You can just rename the interfaces in the webgui.
You can't use normal FreeBSD conf files in pfSense. All the configuration is stored in a single file, config.xml. At boot scripts use that information to write out the various config files, if you manually modify then they will be overwritten the next make you make a change. You can edit the config.xml file directly to make a series of changes but it's open to errors which could cause you all sorts of problems. ;)

The keyboard is an interesting question, I've never tried. You appear to have three keyboards detected on that box. In /dev you have kbd0-2. My boxes here have no keyboards. Do you actually have a real keyboard attached? It appears you can get some info from each using the kbdcontrol command:

kbdcontrol -i < /dev/kbd1

Some useful tests here: http://people.freebsd.org/~yokota/ukbd-howto.txt

Steve

cii

Have just got my hands on a MSA3000 and I'm also interested in getting the LCD/jog wheel running with pfSense. Sadly my unit arrived without HDD so I don't have a working Windows system to drive the LCD otherwise I could have hooked up a logic analyser to see what messages the driver receives from the PC.

nanobot do you still have access to the executables and kernel modules? I wonder if we might be able to decompile the scorpioLCD and led kernel modules and get a bit of information as to how the PC talks to the LCD driver…?

stephenw10

It's very unlikely that the Celestix engineers designed a completely new custom protocol and display for their box. It's probably using common protocols and likely off the shelf components. It may have some custom firmware to drive the control wheel and leds.
At least some of the hardware appears to be using standard USB-serial converters so the first thing I would try would be to recompile the USB-Serial driver to recognise the USB IDs of the hardware in the box and see if you can talk to it from a terminal or read anything it's sending.

Steve

cii

I agree it's probably nothing too complicated or proprietary. It enumerates as a USB HID device, the jog wheel sends out key codes when it's rotated or clicked - that's the easy bit! This is what Ubuntu makes of the device:


Bus 003 Device 002: ID 0cb6:0002 Celestix Networks, Pte., Ltd
Device Descriptor:
  bLength                18
  bDescriptorType         1
  bcdUSB               1.10
  bDeviceClass            0 (Defined at Interface level)
  bDeviceSubClass         0
  bDeviceProtocol         0
  bMaxPacketSize0         8
  idVendor           0x0cb6 Celestix Networks, Pte., Ltd
  idProduct          0x0002
  bcdDevice            1.00
  iManufacturer           1 CELESTIX NETWORKS
  iProduct                2 KEYBOARD + LCD
  iSerial                 0
  bNumConfigurations      1
  Configuration Descriptor:
    bLength                 9
    bDescriptorType         2
    wTotalLength           34
    bNumInterfaces          1
    bConfigurationValue     1
    iConfiguration          0
    bmAttributes         0x80
      (Bus Powered)
    MaxPower               50mA
    Interface Descriptor:
      bLength                 9
      bDescriptorType         4
      bInterfaceNumber        0
      bAlternateSetting       0
      bNumEndpoints           1
      bInterfaceClass         3 Human Interface Device
      bInterfaceSubClass      1 Boot Interface Subclass
      bInterfaceProtocol      1 Keyboard
      iInterface              0
        HID Device Descriptor:
          bLength                 9
          bDescriptorType        33
          bcdHID               1.00
          bCountryCode            0 Not supported
          bNumDescriptors         1
          bDescriptorType        34 Report
          wDescriptorLength      62
          Report Descriptor: (length is 62)
            Item(Global): Usage Page, data= [ 0x01 ] 1
                            Generic Desktop Controls
            Item(Local ): Usage, data= [ 0x06 ] 6
                            Keyboard
            Item(Main  ): Collection, data= [ 0x01 ] 1
                            Application
            Item(Global): Report ID, data= [ 0x01 ] 1
            Item(Global): Usage Page, data= [ 0x07 ] 7
                            Keyboard
            Item(Local ): Usage Minimum, data= [ 0xe0 ] 224
                            Control Left
            Item(Local ): Usage Maximum, data= [ 0xe7 ] 231
                            GUI Right
            Item(Global): Logical Minimum, data= [ 0x00 ] 0
            Item(Global): Logical Maximum, data= [ 0x01 ] 1
            Item(Global): Report Size, data= [ 0x01 ] 1
            Item(Global): Report Count, data= [ 0x08 ] 8
            Item(Main  ): Input, data= [ 0x02 ] 2
                            Data Variable Absolute No_Wrap Linear
                            Preferred_State No_Null_Position Non_Volatile Bitfield
            Item(Global): Report Size, data= [ 0x08 ] 8
            Item(Global): Report Count, data= [ 0x01 ] 1
            Item(Global): Logical Minimum, data= [ 0x00 ] 0
            Item(Global): Logical Maximum, data= [ 0x68 ] 104
            Item(Global): Usage Page, data= [ 0x07 ] 7
                            Keyboard
            Item(Local ): Usage Minimum, data= [ 0x00 ] 0
                            No Event
            Item(Local ): Usage Maximum, data= [ 0x68 ] 104
                            F13
            Item(Main  ): Input, data= [ 0x00 ] 0
                            Data Array Absolute No_Wrap Linear
                            Preferred_State No_Null_Position Non_Volatile Bitfield
            Item(Main  ): End Collection, data=none
            Item(Global): Usage Page, data= [ 0x14 ] 20
                            Alphanumeric Display
            Item(Local ): Usage, data= [ 0x01 ] 1
                            Alphanumeric Display
            Item(Main  ): Collection, data= [ 0x01 ] 1
                            Application
            Item(Global): Report ID, data= [ 0x02 ] 2
            Item(Local ): Usage, data= [ 0x2c ] 44
                            Display Data
            Item(Global): Logical Minimum, data= [ 0x80 ] 128
            Item(Global): Logical Maximum, data= [ 0x7f ] 127
            Item(Global): Report Size, data= [ 0x08 ] 8
            Item(Global): Report Count, data= [ 0x58 ] 88
            Item(Main  ): Output, data= [ 0x02 ] 2
                            Data Variable Absolute No_Wrap Linear
                            Preferred_State No_Null_Position Non_Volatile Bitfield
            Item(Main  ): End Collection, data=none
      Endpoint Descriptor:
        bLength                 7
        bDescriptorType         5
        bEndpointAddress     0x81  EP 1 IN
        bmAttributes            3
          Transfer Type            Interrupt
          Synch Type               None
          Usage Type               Data
        wMaxPacketSize     0x0008  1x 8 bytes
        bInterval              10
Device Status:     0x0000
  (Bus Powered)

There seem to be very few LCDs using a Cypress driver, I saw that the IOWarrior did and that's supported within LCDProc, I tried recompiling it to match the USB VID:PID of the Celestix device but it did not work. I guess that would have been too easy!

So I'm at a little bit of a loss at the moment, I haven't done any USB driver development before. I can't imagine the driver is that complex, but at the same time I don't know how to send character / raw data to a USB HID device. I've started looking at pyusb but it's very low level stuff…

stephenw10

What I would do I were trying to design this…..
Use a standard keyboard controller IC for the jog wheel and LEDs (num,caps and scroll lock).
Use a standard USB-serial converter and connect that to a serial LCD.

You have two USB devices there yes? One is detected as a keyboard already. There are programs in existence that use keyboard LEDs as indicators, it must be possible to try setting them manually. That should be an easy enough test.
The other USB device seen as ugen1.2 in the first posts here is probably the serial converter. I would try to recompile the cypress driver to recognise the USB vendor and product IDs used by it. If that works then try various LCDproc settings to talk to the LCD across it.

Steve

Edit: I can't find a FreeBSD equivalent but in Ubuntu you can try using the setleds command.

cii

Actually it's just a single USB device (combined keyboard and LCD). The problem is there doesn't seem to be any standard way to interface with displays over HID, so without a working system to sniff it is next to impossible to reverse engineer the protocol they have used on the cypress microprocessor.

Probably the easiest solution, certainly time wise, would be to replace the microprocessor with something LCDproc does support, such as an FTDI FT232 chip. This would probably mean losing the jog wheel, though there should be a pin spare for the activity LED at least…

cii

On another subject I've been tinkering with different CPUs as the P4 3GHz mine came with by standard isn't the most energy efficient chip, and I know that some of the higher spec MSA boxes come with core 2 duo chips (E6420 I believe). I've tested the following:

Core2duo E6420 SLA4T (2.13GHz, 1066 FSB, 4M) - boots but unstable
Core2duo E6320 SLA4U (1.86MHz, 1066 FSB, 4M) - boots but unstable
Core2duo E4400 SLA98 (2.00GHz, 800 FSB, 2M) - boots, stable, BIOS reports incorrect speed?

The E4400 gets reported at the BIOS as 50x10 = 500MHz! This is also reported in the OS I'm using to test (Ubuntu) but performance suggests it's actually running at the 2GHz. Doesn't look like it will be possible to run powerd in this sort of state however. You can set the FSB in the BIOS but this seems to get divided down by 4 for some reason with the E4400.

Not quite sure why the E6x20 1066 FSB chips aren't stable. It does take a lot to make them crash, I've been running memtest, mprime torture tests but the 'stress' command seems to reliably kill them given a few cycles. When they crash the system just halts, no input or output but the display remains frozen, very odd. The E4400 has been running with both mprime and the odd stress command for several hours now stable and has topped out at a core temp of 66c. All were tested with known good 2x 1Gb and 2x512Mb PC5300.

The stress command I have been using is

stress --cpu 8 --io 4 --vm 2 --vm-bytes 128M --timeout 10s

All these oddities suggest to me a BIOS issue, though I cannot find an update for it (perhaps unsurprisingly, it being a custom motherboard). If time permits I may try to extract the existing BIOS and see if there is anything that can be unlocked settings wise.

mppkll

I found the datasheets for the display they indicates that the module is using a "NT3881 or equivalent" display driver chip. on the LCDproc hardware page it indicates that that controller is compatible and supported under the hd44780.

http://media.digikey.com/pdf/Data%20Sheets/Varitronix%20PDFs/MDLS40263-01%20Specification.pdf
http://lcdproc.omnipotent.net/hardware.php3
http://media.digikey.com/pdf/Data%20Sheets/Varitronix%20PDFs/MDL(S)40263.pdf
http://media.digikey.com/pdf/Data%20Sheets/Varitronix%20PDFs/Varitronix%20LCD%20Initialization%20Instructions.pdf

stephenw10

Controlling the LCD itself is probably not a problem, there are drivers already in LCDproc for various hd44780 modes. The problem is controlling whatever it is connected to. It appears as a single USB device that does the leds and control wheel as well as the LCD.

Steve

_Adrian_

Following…

pkirkovsky

Here's the pinout of the LCD module:


+--------------------+    PIN   FUNCTION                                            
| 02  04  06  08  10 |   +---+ +--------+                                           
|                    |     01   USB 5v                                              
| 01  03  05  07  09 |     02   USB D-                                              
+--------|  |--------+     03   USB D+                                              
                           04   USB GND                                             
   Connector on PCB        05   LED Green (Power)                                   
                           06   LED Red (Fault)                                     
                           07   LED Ambert (Disk)                                   
          ++               08   System Power (short to GND to boot machine)         
+--------------------+     09   3v                                                  
| 01  03  05  07  09 |     10   State detect ("System On" -> "System Ready")        
|                    |                                                              
| 02  04  06  08  10 |     USB is only enabled when "Ready" state is achieved       
+--------------------+     When module is outside of system, short pin 10 to any LED
                           to force "Ready" state and USB communication             
  Connector on cable

If you want to replace the Cavium Nitrox miniPCI card you could go by using a
Soekris vpn1411 miniPCI card that is supported by pfSense.

pkirkovsky

I have a couple of Celestix boxes with intact stock software. Will be posting USB captures soon, stay tuned…

HammyHavoc

@pkirkovsky:

I have a couple of Celestix boxes with intact stock software. Will be posting USB captures soon, stay tuned…

How's this going? I received my MSA 4000 today, put pfSense on it, would like to get the front panel running and help where possible. ;- )
Also noticed a red LED flashes above the exclamation symbol, does this happen on yours too?

rudelerius

I have one of these boxes as well as 2 x RSA Securid boxes (Celestix Scorpio) with the same LCD/jog wheel combo. It would be nice to have it all working nicely with lcdproc/pfsense. Nice work so far. : )

Following.

rudelerius

Of any help: https://www.astaro.org/19475-post1.html ?

stephenw10

Looks like a binary Linux driver they're using. Not much use in pfSense/FreeBSD.

Steve

rudelerius

Ok. I feel like I've seen a (possibly Windows) driver for this before in searching around the web when I first got the box.

I think that I still have an in-tact system drive from the original appliance ,and I was able to find the driver details for the display/wheel in Windows, then research it online to find more information. I didn't know what to do with it once I found it, so I think I've long since deleted whatever it was I found. But if I found it once, I might possibly be able to find it again.

I'll have to dig up the drive that has the original Win2K3 install on it and see if I can find the driver info. If I can find the .inf file would that be of any help?

rudelerius

The device is listed in Win2K3 as a Jungo lcd. The driver is windrvr6.sys. Googlefu: http://www.jungo.com/st/products/windriver/

Not sure if that helps or not. Let me know if I can provide anything else.