Watchguard Firebox M400/M500
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Hi all,
I thought I would finally look into upgrading the BIOS on my unit, I have FREEDOS on a CF card which is booted and the output is showing in Putty. The problem is I cannot type anything. I seem to recall I had this problem in the past either with an XTM5 or the old X750e.
The last time I just hard coded the BIOS commands and hoped for the best. Any suggestions? I did wonder if it was Putty.
Any other free Windows Terminal emulators worth trying?
Thanks
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@dlucas46 I’ve always preferred Tera Term over putty for anything involving a serial port.
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@MathewPope M400 running here with an i5-4590T and 4GB of RAM. Like some other processors swaps, this one does not reboot correctly.
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No joy with Tera Term. Same behaviour.
I am using the autoexec bat with the Bios file. Speed 9600 baud 8, 1 Parity None Flow Control Xon/Xoff
Anybody else seen this behaviour? I might try a different COM port and see if that makes any difference.
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@dlucas46 Did you edit the autoexec to change the keyboard language to English per the instructions? I believe that, as downloaded, it's set up for German or something.
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It could be the terminal not reflecting what you type. Or the cable might not have Tx connected. Are you able to type things into the BIOS setup as expected?
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@stephenw10 said in Watchguard Firebox M400/M500:
It could be the terminal not reflecting what you type. Or the cable might not have Tx connected. Are you able to type things into the BIOS setup as expected?
Not flashed the BIOS yet, so no console output.
The cable works fine if I boot the pfsense install image and the install works fine.
This must be freedos specific
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@dlucas46 I ran into similar problems last time when I flashed my 2nd M400. The 1st one I flashed went without a hitch following the instructions. If I remember right, I ended up having to set the BAUD rate to 115200 despite the instructions saying to use a lower rate. If I did any other rate, the text on the screen looked like Chinese characters or jibberish. It was kind of scary because the "GUI" wasn't rendering properly at the higher rate - I thought I was going to end up bricking my 2nd unit.
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The terminal code in FreeDOS (and usually in the BIOS setup) is crude. It requires the additional flow control lines where as the code in pfSense does not. So it could be the cable only has three pins connected.
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I thought the Cisco branded cables were all pins connected?
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I would expect them to be.
Can you interrupt the BIOS POST to reach the password prompt? That would show you can send something. -
@stephenw10 said in Watchguard Firebox M400/M500:
I would expect them to be.
Can you interrupt the BIOS POST to reach the password prompt? That would show you can send something.Except the default m400 bios has console redirect turned off so you see nothing.
Can you even enter the bios setup with the stock bios?
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Ah, clearly been too long!
You might try a different client device. We have seen Macs that are unable to send data over serial. I assume you're not using a Mac but worth trying something else.
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@stephenw10 said in Watchguard Firebox M400/M500:
Ah, clearly been too long!
You might try a different client device. We have seen Macs that are unable to send data over serial. I assume you're not using a Mac but worth trying something else.
Nope not Mac (Windows 10) but I do have some other machines around that have hardware COM ports. Also have some Linux machines I could try.
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Hi, Does anyone know the max size of cf that can be used in the m400 ?
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An SSD is far superior in pretty much every way!
Every time I update mine I think it's failed because the CF is so slow.
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@stephenw10 I was just keeping simple as ive previously done one of these by just putting the nanobsd image on the cf and no bios mods. Ive done many of the 32bit X750e flashing bios but for the m400 seems more complex or less clear defined instructions other than picking this forum post.
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In many ways it's easier since you can just install to a CF card and then boot it. I'd be surprised if you can get a CF card that's too big. But I also wouldn't try to get anything bigger than, say, 16GB. 4GB is fine for most installs. If you're trying to run anything that needs more drive space you shouldn't be using CF. Be sure to enable RAM drives to preserve the CF write life.
