pfSense on Watchguard M270
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There are no internal expansion options in the M270. Not even SATA ports.
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@stephenw10
So it is heavily cost optimized like the m200 and m300 were then...
I assume the only things on the board are some ddr4 dimm slots and the bootable msata slot?In that case i'll see if I can get one cheap enough.
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Yup, just one SODIMM slot.
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Hey just wanted to add a correction that there ARE internal expansion ports on the M270. There are two MSATA ports and 1 traditional sata port though it uses a non-traditional 4 pin connector for SATA power.
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Hmm, interesting the one I have has neither of those populated. Nor any of the additional fan headers.
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That’s very interesting, thank you for sharing yours as well! Perhaps different hardware revisions or unrealized SKU stratification?
I will add that my M270s both have identical internals and list their HW Model as TL2AE8 on the serial number sticker. Does yours list a different hardware model?
Running a Ubuntu on each of them and there no real identifying information from dmidecode around model, board information or anything else that I could see as a delineating factor, all just the “to be filled OEM” message.
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Still labelled TL2AE8. Also on the label:
277-M270-001 Rev A -
We have three TL2AE8 with one slot:
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What's actually wired to that slot? It's labelled 'mpcie' but the presence of the SIM socket on the other one and the number of lines attached make me think it's probably USB.
Is that actually an mSATA card in your pic @mellowmatt? Is it detetcted?
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@stephenw10 uwww I just got one of these from an office we did decom on. Mine says V0.6 though. I read up earlier you said ALL the ports are connected via an internal switch and CE won't be able to use them. That is a bummer, however for my homelab i'd be fine with just ix0 and ix1.
My issue though is the mSATA won't even boot. I installed CE on a different mSATA by putting it in an external enclosure and booting a laptop with the pfsense serial image on a thumb drive. I see the bios screen where it says tab or del but then just blank.
Shouldn't I at least see it try to load?
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I would expect to see the bootloader at least if you installed from the memstick serial image. In a laptopm that might have been tricky though.
But even doing so the switch ports will all be disabled by default and CE has no way to enable them. You can only run Plus on the M270. For now at least.
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@stephenw10 Hmm i'm pretty sure it was the serial image. To be sure, i'm going to rufus the thumbdrive again and make certain its the serial image. Then i'll boot the laptop again with the setup and install to the mSATA. Going to take screenshots of securecrt when the m270 boots this time too.
