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    Watchguard Firebox M400/M500

    Hardware
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    • N
      N1ck
      last edited by

      Yeah it seems my Firebox M500 will only boot an hdd or ssd on sata port 3. 2 and 4 will not work(won't even now I installed it on port 3).

      And the Firebox M500 will boot MBR on CF, but requires UEFI on sata.

      Strange, but with my tests it looks like this is 100% true.

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      • stephenw10S
        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
        last edited by

        I imagined that would be identical to the m400 other than RAM and CPU but maybe not.

        You can dump the BIOS image from the pfSense command line using flashrom but it cannot re-write it.

        pkg install flashrom
        
        rehash
        
        flashrom -p internal -r /root/backup.rom
        

        Reading that should be no risk but any operation involving the carries some danger. I've done that several times here though.

        Steve

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        • S
          Scorch95
          last edited by

          Those with ssd installations are you installing a bracket to hold the drive or just letting it sit inside the case?

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          • stephenw10S
            stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
            last edited by

            I'm not currently but I previously found adhesive velcro pads to be an acceptable solution for SSDs at least.

            Steve

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            • S
              Scorch95
              last edited by

              I have an m400 on the way but is the 4GB DDR3 RDimm or UDimm?

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              • I
                iJay-XTM5 @Scorch95
                last edited by

                @scorch95 I just have the SSD inside the M400 without any brackets. The stiffness in the power supply and SATA cables is enough to hold it in place. Besides I hardly move the M400. Sometime in the future I am considering a CPU upgrade for AES-NI capability, I might use that opportunity to get or make my own brackets for the SSD at that time.

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                • I
                  iJay-XTM5 @Scorch95
                  last edited by iJay-XTM5

                  @scorch95 Sorry I re-read your question and realized I did not answer it correctly. I cannot find anything indicated on the RAM stick itself, but found the following on Lanner's FW-7585 manual. Dual-channel DDR3/DDR3L 1066/1333/1600 MHz, un-buffered, non-ECC or ECC.
                  Here's what mine looks like.

                  0_1529550833172_IMG_3328si.jpg

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                  • S
                    Scorch95 @iJay-XTM5
                    last edited by

                    @ijay-xtm5

                    Thanks. I figured unbuffered was the likely answered but figured it was worth asking before buying a some additional ram.

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                    • S
                      Scorch95
                      last edited by

                      Stephen do we know if this will support Xeon E3-12XX v3 chips? Looking at Lanners literature it seems to only show i series but with a c226 chipset I’d imagine it would but you never know.

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                      • stephenw10S
                        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                        last edited by stephenw10

                        No idea, sorry. I don't have such things to play with. 😉

                        It wouldn't surprise me though. The BIOS appears to have this microcode:
                        0_1529947158093_cpu_microcode.png
                        I can't easily see what CPUs that might suggest...

                        Steve

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                        • S
                          Scorch95
                          last edited by

                          Well got my m400 in finally. Also received an i3-4370 to go with it. It already has pfSense on it but I believe it’s attached to a CF card rather than a ssd. I’ll need to swap the cpu and reinstall to a spare ssd and I’ll be set for the eventual 2.5 release.

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                          • S
                            Scorch95
                            last edited by

                            CPU has been switched and system powers up. Got it attached to my network currently to test system out. Will try to get SSD installed and pfsense moved over from CF card in the next day or so.

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                            • S
                              Scorch95
                              last edited by

                              Has anyone noticed if the cpu utilization graph works? Mine is sitting at 0%.

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                              • stephenw10S
                                stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                last edited by

                                Which graph exactly are you referring to? The one in System > Monitoring?

                                The CPU util value there is swamped by the processes number. You need to disable the processes line to see it.

                                What pfSense version are you running?

                                Steve

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                                • S
                                  Scorch95 @stephenw10
                                  last edited by

                                  @stephenw10
                                  2.4.3-RELEASE-p1 (amd64)
                                  This would be on the main page under system info.

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                                  • stephenw10S
                                    stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                    last edited by

                                    The CPU usage bar indicator works fine here.

                                    0_1530970455389_Selection_435.png

                                    Steve

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                                    • S
                                      Scorch95
                                      last edited by

                                      Wonder if it’s bc I’m not using any features other than default routing. Should hopefully have it moved over to ssd tomorrow and I’ll transfer previous settings then.

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                                      • stephenw10S
                                        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                        last edited by

                                        Well if you have the 4370 in there, 2 cores 4 threads @ 3.8GHz, and you're not moving much traffic it might not show much use I guess. Especially if you don't have speedstep enabled so it's running at full speed all the time.
                                        I assume the load averages still show?

                                        Steve

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                                        • S
                                          Scorch95 @stephenw10
                                          last edited by Scorch95

                                          @stephenw10

                                          Well it looks like I’m running into the same problem above about uefi. If I put installer onto cf it boots fine. If I put the installer on ssd with an external enclosure and Rufus and boot from there I get a kernel error. I get same error once I get pfSense installed on ssd from cf and it tries to boot.

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                                          • stephenw10S
                                            stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                            last edited by

                                            Can we see the exact error you're getting?

                                            Did you try installing as ZFS and selecting the UEFI or UEFI+BIOS partition scheme?

                                            Steve

                                            S H 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
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