Watchguard Firebox M400/M500

jutg987654321

So I got my M500 booted to freedos finally, and successfully flashed zanthos v6 BIOS, booting pfsense off an SSD on a SATA port, fans turned down, 16G (2x8g ECC UDIMM) of DDR3 I had laying around working without issues.

The only combination that worked for me was the freedos2 image provided here straight to the STOCK CF card. I tested both VGA and console output modifying that image and they worked. Reading back over the thread I noticed the other M500 users also had issues booting freedos from a USB - so that lines up with what I was seeing. I used Rufus and win32imager back and forth for everything and verified all the images I burned were booting fine on other devices.

M500 (my experience)
WORKED: freedos (image from you guys!) --> STOCK CF card = VGA (or serial) works OK
WORKED: PFsense serial install image --> USB (all sizes <16g)
WORKED: PFsense standard install image --> USB drive (all sizes <16g)
DID NOT WORK: freedos (custom image) --> USB drives = no serial output, no VGA output
DID NOT WORK: freedos (custom image) --> 2 random CF cards I had (both 4GB Verbatim, 2GB Transcend)

Thanks to everyone in this thread!

nd-t

Looks like this is still a pretty active thread on the Watchguard Firebox.

My work is throwing out a Firebox M400 so I took it. From some brief reading, it seems the CPU and RAM can be upgraded and pfSense might be able to installed on an SSD too!

I'm currently running my pfSense on a VM and it's been fantastic.. but of course I'd prefer my firewall to baremetal. My biggest concern is going to be performance.

Would anyone have any results from PPPoE testing? Running it in a VM, I get a max speed of 500-600MBPS, so I have opted to use the ISP's DMZ solution instead. Not ideal, but it's the only way I could get the symmetrical Gigabit speeds I pay for. So yeah, I don't mind buying another CPU for the upgrade, as long as it can perform well.

Thoughts?

stephenw10

You need good single thread performance. I would grab an i3-4130 and try it. They are pretty cheap most places and don't hit the reboot bug. I would expect it to be fine.

Steve

nd-t

@stephenw10

Looks like less than $50 on ebay, not bad at all. The host I use has a 2.66Ghz CPU, so hopefully the i3 is enough. I'd still be okay with not using PPPoE, not a huge deal for me.

Would you also know if controlling fan speed is possible without flashing the BIOS?

stephenw10

It is. You can use WGXepc64 to set the minimum fan speed after booting.

aasimenator

@stephenw10

I recently bought a WatchGuard Firebox M400 which has an Intel i3-4130, the system was already pre-configured with pfSense and I didn't have to do any bios hack or installation of pfSense. All I did was reset the pfsense and started configuring it.

There are 2 fan's in the system and they are too loud running at 7000 rpm each. I followed the steps to get WGXepc installed on the box, ran the permission chmod 0755 /conf/WGXepc but when running ./WGXepc -f 10 I get Permission denied.

I have also tried to make WGXepc executable with chmod +x but that doesn't work either

I also tried the WGXepc64 you linked about that didn't work either

permissions:

I really need to get the fans to slow down so I can use it at my home.
If you could help me out, it would be greatly appreciated, Also is there anything that monitors the Fan Speed in the GUI?

stephenw10

I'll just point out that selling that with pfSense pre-installed is against the license restrictions. Whoever sold that to you has broken the terms.

I would also recommend re-installing anyway it since you have no idea what might have been modified. You can't be sure it's still secure.

It looks like is has been flashed with one of the modified BIOSes since we can see that Speedstep is active. That also means powerd is enabled which isn't part of the default install.
Depending on which BIOS was used that fans may already be set slower or you can enter the BIOS setup and set them.

You need to use the 64bit version of WGXepc so WGXepc64. pfSense is 64bit only since 2.4.

You need to set the permissions but chmod 0755 should be sufficient for that.

Try running it without a switch. it should report the hardware type and program version.

[2.7.0-DEVELOPMENT][admin@m400-2.stevew.lan]/root: ls -ls WGX*
28 -rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  27393 Nov 22  2020 WGXepc64
[2.7.0-DEVELOPMENT][admin@m400-2.stevew.lan]/root: ./WGXepc64
Found Firebox M400/500
WGXepc Version 1.6_1 22/11/2020 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

aasimenator

@stephenw10

Thank you for that, I was able to run WGXepc64 in the /root folder
originally I had it in /conf folder based on the site hexhound information

I install a fresh version of pfsense on the device and configure it. I didn't know that it's not allowed to be sold, there are lots of these things being sold on eBay pre-installed with pfsense.

Can you help me understand the Hex number 00-FF that I need to set, can it be queried to get the current running hex number or rpm of the fan?

stephenw10

Yes, it is showing 0xa as the current speed there. Which is odd because that implies 0x0a which is lower than 0x8c, by a lot!

I am running:

[2.7.0-DEVELOPMENT][admin@m400-2.stevew.lan]/root: ./WGXepc64 -f
Found Firebox M400/500
Current fanspeed is 22, minimum fanspeed is 1e

Steve

aasimenator

@stephenw10

The below value was something i was playing around with and not something that it came with

after taking both screenshots above I change the Smart Fan Configuration to auto
now when I run ./WGXepc64 -f it is showing

stephenw10

Actually my last values were with my modified BIOS. Since you can access it you must have the Xanthos BIOS.

On an unmodified box I have used:

[2.7.0-DEVELOPMENT][admin@m400-2.stevew.lan]/root: ./WGXepc64 -f 16
Found Firebox M400/500
Minimum fanspeed set to 16 at 45°C or less

Steve

mithermo1

Can anyone offer some guidance on creating a freedos boot device as the images I've seen posted and linked to this thread I'm unable to create a bootable cf card with freedos on. The m400 just doesnt seem to want to boot freedos. Using the same cf card with pfsense image on it booted no problem and I was able to use that to install pfsense onto an ssd attached.

jutg987654321

@mithermo1 I had the same problems. The only combo I could get working was with the provided freedos image from this thread and the STOCK CF CARD that came with the watch guard.

I had multiple other brands/sizes of CF cards and none would boot on the M400 - but the stock card that was in it would (same image same write method same size card etc...)

Check out my post from awhile back in this thread it shows all the combos I tried to boot from.

Makes no sense why it did what it did - but I tested and retested (and verified all images worked on other hardware). I also ended up connecting VGA output straight to the motherboard at some point - that helped a bunch with troubleshooting.

MH 0

@mithermo1 I can't say specifically for the M400/M500 but I have had a similar issue with a M570, only pfsense would output to the console enabling me to do an install.

My way around this was to install my non-pfsense OS on another machine and config the bootloader to enable serial/tty0 output as well as screen/console output, I then moved the SSD from that machine into the M570 and was able to review the output screens, complete the install and modify IP addresses using the console.

I've had VMware ESXi v7 and ProxMox running on the M570 thanks to this method.

mithermo1

@jutg987654321 said in Watchguard Firebox M400/M500:

@mithermo1 I had the same problems. The only combo I could get working was with the provided freedos image from this thread and the STOCK CF CARD that came with the watch guard.

Looks like this was the same issue I had. Used the stock 4GB card that came with it, freedos booted and bios flashed. Thank you.

mithermo1

Is there a setting in the bios that will restore power to the M400 after a power outage? Unless it natively will do this (I am yet to just yank the power from it)

stephenw10

It comes up at the last power state in the default BIOS.

mithermo1

@stephenw10 Many thanks.

seacombe2379

After been sat on the sidelines and reading through this I'm swaying towards getting a m400, hopefully soon in my village I will have full fttp so 1gb up/down, but before I do is it worth it still today as the this thread has been around a while.

I have a pfsense build on a older gaming pc ( i7 3770k 32gd ram 256gb ssd) but it's in a tower case on top of my x3650 m3 which is impractical and power hungry.

Had pfsense running on a VM but the post time of a server to a bare metal machine is night and day in a family household.

Not shy in tinkering and messing with stuff spent a week trying to get pfsense to run on a meru wireless controller for lols only to find out its 32bit CPU and definitely not worth it .

Any advice or suggestions would be great and thanks in advance

stephenw10

It will pass 1Gbps easily enough if that's what you mean. You can replace the CPU with a variety of other 4th gen models for more throughput or less power consumption.

Steve