PfSense on a Celestix S-X MSA 4000

pkirkovsky

If any of you have access to binaries (either windows or linux) please let me know because they can be very helpful in decoding the command schema for the LCD operation.

I have default/stock system images for both Windows and Linux (recovery partition) of the ScorpioX machines (the Celestix MSA/WSA/etc and certain RSA-branded boxes all share the same base platform).

The Linux recovery partition has some control binaries and kernel modules (a module for the LCD + jogdial and a module for the alert LED). The Windows side has basically the same setup, but the display/jogdial/LED are all rolled into one driver binary.

I don't want to widely distribute these due to copyright concerns. PM me for further details.

brmiller

@yeyus:

Got it working!

Was this Linux or FreeBSD?

EDIT: Must be Linux; hidtest-hidraw appears to be a https://github.com/signal11/hidapi utility. I'm curious what the equivalent FreeBSD approach is - when I looked at LCDProc, the [pfSense] config asked a lot of questions I didn't know!

rudelerius

@twisted2k3:

The alert LED is GPIO. Here's the linux source….

@stephenw10 - your WGXepc program set GPIO values for the arm/disarm LED on the WG FB boxes, didn't it? (I don't know much about this….) Could the program be used in similar way to probe the GPIO for the LCD/Keyboard controls of this device?

pkirkovsky

Here are the kernel modules and utility scripts for the LCD and warning LED from the Linux restore partition on my Celestix device. Running strings suggests that these are under GPL, so I'm putting them here:

https://kirkovsky.com/junkbin/MSA2000i_ScorpioX.zip

NightShaman

Any progress on this? I would love to see it working. Just picked up a wsa-4200, and all that is left is the LCD :)

HammyHavoc

Waiting on this too, would be great if we could get it working.

Also, anybody know how to make this thing any more quiet? Different fans? Mulling over swapping out the motherboard, just not sure how the daughter board of NICs connects.

Rhinofart

Has anybody gotten the screens to work under pfSense? I just picked one up, got it installed, and would love for the LCD / Jog to do something other than –------------ SYSTEM READY -------------

cii

@yeyus:

Got it working!

Hi yeyus,

Would it be possible to post the code you used to get the display working please?

Thanks!

cii

@twisted2k3:

The alert LED is GPIO. Here's the linux source. Please share back if anyone can get it to work on FreeBSD.

Hi twisted2k3,

How did you determine the IOADDR (base address?) of the GPIO controller? I am trying to recompile for Linux with an WSA-4200 which has a different motherboard to the MSA…

Thanks!

kendalja

Sorry to bring back an older thread but did you guys ever get this working?

stephenw10

Yeah so in Linux it is recognised and creates /dev/hidraw0. That doesn't happen in FreeBSD so you would need to address the USB device directly or create some other driver.

The GPIO LED is probably controllable though.

Steve

kendalja

I was able to find this out there not sure if it would help:

https://github.com/camerongray1515/Celestix-Scorpio-X-LCD

stephenw10

Unfortunately it doesn't. It still uses the same Linux driver:

def lcd_display(message, line=1):
    message = str(message)
    line_selection = "\x00" if line == 1 else "\x01"
    preamble = "\x02\x00\x00{0}\x28\x00\x00\x00".format(line_selection)
    endpad = "\x20"*(40-len(message))

    data = preamble + message + endpad
    with open("/dev/hidraw0", "w") as lcd:
lcd.write(data)

Addresses /dev/hidraw0.

Interesting that that driver is in VyOS though…. if it's a standard Linux driver we might be able to see some clues.

Steve

kendalja

dmesg on system yields:

ukbd0: <vendor 0="" 2="" 0x0cb6="" keyboard="" +="" lcd,="" class="" 0,="" rev="" 1.10="" 1.00,="" addr="">on usbus1</vendor>

fmertz

Looks like there is something testable with the information published this far.

The Python code shows a sequence of hex codes

The device is known

The BSD shell has the printf built-in, and it accepts codes on octal format.

So, to hexadecimal 0x20 becomes octal \40

Try something like this:

printf "\02\00\00\61\50\00\00\00Some Message" > /dev/ukbd0

Try this for line 2:

printf "\02\00\00\62\50\00\00\00Some Message" > /dev/ukbd0

kendalja

So something interesting happened. I rebooted the machine and now dmesg shows:

ukbd1: <vendor 0="" 2="" 0x0cb6="" keyboard="" +="" lcd,="" class="" 0,="" rev="" 1.10="" 1.00,="" addr="">on usbus1

This is what I get while running the printf command

[2.3.5-RELEASE][root@pfSense.geek.local]/: printf "\02\00\00\61\50\00\00\00Some Message" > /dev/ukbd1
/dev/ukbd1: Device busy.</vendor>

stephenw10

Hmm, that's not good. Changing device names makes it that much harder to work with even we could get it to accept any input. :-\

Steve

fmertz

Good reading here:

https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=ukbd&sektion=4

Seems like we would need that character device. Once it shows as /dev/kbd1, that printf should be directed to it. Worth a try…

kendalja

@fmertz:

Good reading here:

https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=ukbd&sektion=4

Seems like we would need that character device. Once it shows as /dev/kbd1, that printf should be directed to it. Worth a try…

I’m relatively new to pfsense here and have read that. How would I go about compiling that in the kernel and config to test? May need a little guidance here but looks like we’re getting somewhere here!

fmertz

Actually, looking at the Linux device, it suggests it is a raw device. Maybe the character device is not needed.

Maybe it needs to be initialized read/write:

exec 3<> /dev/ukbd1