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    Watchguard Firebox M400/M500

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    • S
      Scorch95
      last edited by Scorch95

      I just picked up a 4130 off eBay so we’ll see if the rebooting issue goes away when it arrives and I get a chance to install it.

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      • S
        Scorch95 @stephenw10
        last edited by Scorch95

        @stephenw10 said in Watchguard Firebox M400:

        If you use the BIOS @zanthos posted you can do whatever you want. It's completely unlocked. To a dangerous level! 😉

        I may give it a shot to unlock mine but I’m in no place to unbrick it if it goes badly so we’ll see.

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        • chpalmerC
          chpalmer @stephenw10
          last edited by

          This post is deleted!
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          • M
            Mookatroid
            last edited by Mookatroid

            Hello again,
            I thought I would chime in with my M400 deployment progress :)
            As noted earlier, the factory M400 accepted 2 x 8GB PC3-14900E DIMMs and I am running an i3-4130 CPU while I wait for my Xeon to arrive.
            While waiting, I purchased a Lanner PCI-E Riser for the FW-7585.
            Installation was simple enough, however, I have not found a way to enable that slot for PCI-E video yet.
            Using a riser on my previous firewall (Caswell CAR-2030) was an easy solution to add VGA output, but so far no joy with same on the M400 + riser.
            6d9ad377-a7ce-4192-8632-f6119f540993-image.png
            So I pushed forward and made a custom cable for the onboard VGA header.
            As it turns out, the 2mm pitch header is the same as the old 2.5" IDE drives, so I was able to turn this old IDE adapter ...
            470d9884-fd35-430f-9ded-59c5751a0fc1-image.png
            into this ...
            c18890e8-040c-4359-bf7c-790772d180f1-image.png
            by just soldering up Red, Green, Blue, Hsync, Vsync and Ground.
            Works like a charm ! :)
            6d652a1b-942a-47ba-b238-36e51f6ba091-image.png
            From there, the newly acquired VGA output made backing up the password-protected M400 factory BIOS a much easier task followed by flashing the unlocked/mod'ed BIOS provided by Zanthos.
            So things are progressing well now, short of the money invested into the PCI-E riser than may never find a purpose.
            But it is what it is :)
            Will update again once I install my pending Xeon CPU and take a crack at installing pfSense onto a SATA SSD.

            devid79D 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • M
              Mookatroid
              last edited by Mookatroid

              Update time ! :)
              Xeon E3-1265L v3 arrived.
              Installed it and posted without issue.
              Dropped a 128GB SATA SSD onto SATA4 interface and tucked it into the front left corner.
              Pushed USB installer image to CF card.
              Powered up and booted from CF.
              Installed to SSD without issue.
              Reboot and running pfSense 2.4.4 from SSD without issue
              :)

              PS ... fan control set manually to 67

              M 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • stephenw10S
                stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                last edited by

                So it reboots correctly? Did it reboot with the 4130?

                Steve

                M S 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • M
                  Mookatroid @stephenw10
                  last edited by

                  @stephenw10

                  That is correct Stephen.
                  At least for me anyway. :)
                  I have not experienced any issues with either Halt System or Reboot System when I had the i3-4130 installed or while having the more recent E3-1265Lv3 installed. This held true via the webGUI as well as the local VGA console.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • S
                    Scorch95 @stephenw10
                    last edited by

                    @stephenw10
                    Good afternoon,

                    I can also confirm my system reboots correctly with the 4130. I just got mine in the mail and swapped it out and it rebooted just fine.

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                    • stephenw10S
                      stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                      last edited by stephenw10

                      Hmm, I wonder what's differet about the 4160 and 4370 then... 🤔

                      With the 4160 it would not boot at all when I disabled hyperthreading as a test.

                      S 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • S
                        Scorch95 @stephenw10
                        last edited by

                        @stephenw10
                        Could it be possible that when the bios was written that the 4160 and 4370 didn't exist yet so it was written in a way that just doesn't jive with something in these two processors? Although I don't see why there would be anything truly different other than speed that would cause a conflict.

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                        • stephenw10S
                          stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                          last edited by stephenw10

                          Mmm, maybe. They are both 2014 vs 2013 for the CPUs that work as expected. The Xanthos bios has updated modules though and still behaves the same....

                          Steve

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                          • K
                            kr81
                            last edited by

                            Hello,

                            i unlocked my m400 with bios from zanthos. Can i use the same bios file for my m500?

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                            • stephenw10S
                              stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                              last edited by

                              You almost certainly can (though I've never tried). As far as I know it's the same board.
                              Do so at your own risk etc.....

                              Steve

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                              • K
                                kr81
                                last edited by

                                Flashed the Bios on M500 successfully

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                • M
                                  Mookatroid @Mookatroid
                                  last edited by

                                  @Mookatroid said in Watchguard Firebox M400:

                                  Update time ! :)
                                  Xeon E3-1265L v3 arrived.
                                  Installed it and posted without issue.
                                  Dropped a 128GB SATA SSD onto SATA4 interface and tucked it into the front left corner.
                                  Pushed USB installer image to CF card.
                                  Powered up and booted from CF.
                                  Installed to SSD without issue.
                                  Reboot and running pfSense 2.4.4 from SSD without issue
                                  :)

                                  PS ... fan control set manually to 67

                                  Final deployment update :)
                                  My M400 build and bench testing finally wrapped up and I went live with a brand new 120/20 cable ISP with it.
                                  The ISP drop is a single gigabit line to the M400 WAN interface, but I setup a 2xgigabit LACP LAGG between the M400 and my primary switch for PrivateLAN traffic and a 2xgigabit LACP LAGG (with assigned VLAN tagging) for my GuestLAN (both wired and wireless clients).
                                  All is ripping along at a beautiful pace !!
                                  :)

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                                  • H
                                    Humble_Servant @eisenb11
                                    last edited by

                                    @eisenb11 Where you ever able to get the LED lights to Arm/ Disarm? If so what steps did you use to achieve this function? I have a WatchGuard m400 with pfSense installed to a 16GB CF Card and the LAN & Wan's are working however I can not get the LEDs to work as with the XTM 5 Series.

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                                    • stephenw10S
                                      stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                      last edited by

                                      See the post below his question. 😉

                                      https://forum.netgate.com/post/803206

                                      Steve

                                      H 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                      • H
                                        Humble_Servant @stephenw10
                                        last edited by

                                        @stephenw10 This does not appear to work either. Screenshot (18).png

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                                        • stephenw10S
                                          stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                          last edited by

                                          Because you are running an ancient version 😉 :

                                          [2.5.0-DEVELOPMENT][admin@m400-2.stevew.lan]/root: ./WGXepc64 
                                          Found Firebox M400/500
                                          WGXepc Version 1.4 13/8/2019 stephenw10
                                          WGXepc can accept two arguments:
                                           -f (CPU fan) will return the current and minimum fan speed or if followed
                                              by a number in hex, 00-FF, will set it.
                                           -f2 (System fan) will return the current and minimum fan speed or if followed
                                              by a number in hex, 00-FF, will set it.
                                           -l (led) will set the arm/disarm led state to the second argument:
                                              red, green, red_flash, green_flash, red_flash_fast, green_flash_fast, off
                                           -b (backlight) will set the lcd backlight to the second argument:
                                              on or off. Do not use with LCD driver.
                                           -t (temperature) shows the current CPU temperature reported by the
                                              SuperIO chip. X-e box only.
                                          Not all functions are supported by all models
                                          

                                          Steve

                                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                          • H
                                            Humble_Servant
                                            last edited by

                                            Well that explains why it is not working do you have the link to the updated version?

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