Enable VGA on Serial Memstick install

stephenw10

Yeah, still pretty loud though.

I also found no way to enable console redirect for the BIOS output which would be nice.

Steve

fibrewire

@stephenw10 - thanks for your help, had to reinstall again and used the flashed CF card to reinstall 2.4.5 after I realized an issue with 2.5.0

Is the XTM-850 supportable moving forward?

https://www.watchguard.com/docs/datasheet/wg_xtm800_ds.pdf

stephenw10

I don't see why not. What was the issue?

Mine appears to have a hardware fault. You just reinstalled to HD using the memstick serial image on a CF card?

Steve

fibrewire

@stephenw10 yes both of my XTM 800 series appear as though they have a hardware fault on 2.5.0, but reinstalling from 2.4.5 from CF brought them both back online with no issues.

While running 2.5.0 I can sometimes make it to the serial console successfully, other times I cannot. It’s as if something on boot shifts the memory from one location to output on the serial console. As soon as this behavior is triggered it takes a very long time for the web interface to respond on some options, other options not so long. The pfsense boot chime is slower than normal as well.

Entering the boot loader and booting the kernel.old will remedy this, so it would seem kernel related.

stephenw10

Hmm, interesting. Something like this?

Setting up DNSs...
Starting DNS Resolver...APEI ??? Error cf000000-4a78-6a04-313f-c2e10ed83fa3:
 Error Data:
 01 6f da c9 28 52 b6 38 2e 23 e2 5c 1a 77 2c 29
 e0 a8 06 9a 66 07 12 11 ff 34 09 d4 9f 63 6d a0
 43 ef d4 3a 09 6e a5 a5 a4 6e 24 f9 43 87 03 52
 74 96 4f 06 91 70 e9 2a 02 a9 f7 1a d5 d7 48 fa
 51 c2 5d ac 10 54 aa bb a0 e2 25 3c 3a 95 3c d8
 68 50 42 e6 3c 81 3f d2 69 55 c2 e4 f7 82 d9 d0
 19 57 f9 66 d1 b8 c9 4e 12 1b ff c3 b1 d7 7a 7a
 48 02 51 4c 71 4a 99 b7 ba e7 ab 3d 55 e0 88 e1
 b1 cf ad aa be 00 fd 11 8b b7 b0 16 9f a5 6e 40
 41 1c 56 c0 d0 7d 49 2c 52 aa 5f 9b 22 b2 b3 48
 2c 1b e3 40 15 40 ab b2 23 e5 e7 3c 3c 24 bc 83
 ab 7e 20 72 83 3a e0 0f 86 bb b5 93 e4 18 d0 1d
 9d 31 bb d5 86 06 e1 92 05 76 77 76 bf 47 7e b1
 c9 e4 12 bc 8a fb 64 ef c4 cb 94 ab 4a 53 07 38
 76 a3 ce 1c cd 96 c7 59 95 90 3c 06 ce 74 c5 ab
 97 ea 3e 38 63 00 90 92 3e f5 e9 b4 64 2f 10 06
 7d 3c 4b d3 d6 1e 53 c0 1a 6a 57 cb ab e8 6d 3b
 85 97 98 35 e9 aa 4c 1a 15 07 d0 fd aa ed ed 39

fibrewire

@stephenw10 yes that exactly. Hopefully it’s an easy fix?

stephenw10

Aha! Well no idea. I had assumed it was bad hardware but if it's consistent across devices though it must be something 2.5 is tickling. That's good I hads written off that box.
Digging required I guess....

maevoureik

@fibrewire What brand of CF card are you using? I have a 4gb Verbatim CF card and my box won't pick it up.

It all started when I upgraded from 2.4.5 to 2.5 and got the same boot loop error with the memory/kernel problem. Kind of a new to all of this, I tried flashing the bios with FreeDOS on a 256mb CF card, nearly bricking the system. Thankfully, it never succeeded. Then, I took out the hard drive and tried to do a fresh install via laptop, but that didnt work either as the system doesn't even boot up. I still see "WG Bios v1.3" on the LCD when I turn it on. I'm curious about the VGA route, but if I can avoid taking that route I will.

fibrewire

@maevoureik https://www.ebay.com/itm/143542942038

No need to flash the BIOS, the present one works fine.

I believe I used Balena Etcher to write the serial console image.

As an aside, if you interrupt the boot process when the serial console first connects then you can boot the kernel.old on a machine that has been upgraded. Everything will work as long as you don't reboot. There are some notes above for doing that, and notes for making the kernel.old permanent elsewhere in the forum until you can resolve your upgrade issue later.

jockum

I had the same problem (APEI ??? Error spam) with XTM850.
Resolved by adding:
debug.acpi.disabled="apei"
to /boot/loader.conf
See https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=248746

By the way, how do you adjust your fan speeds with XTM850? Tried WGXepc64 but not supported.

stephenw10

Nice find! That seems to have resurrected my XTM800 too.

There are fan control values in the BIOS. It doesn't go super quiet though, it's a power hungry box.

WGXepc should detect the hardware but I never found a way to set the LED on that board (despite looking for a long time!) and the fan control in the BIOS was 'good enough' for me. You do need a VGA console to access it though which is a PITA. Might be possible to add it.

Steve