Watchguard XTM 5 Series

mgfair

I have a Watchguard XTM520. I am thinking of installing Pfsense and upgrading the CPU and Memory. What is recommended for this product? I can see that an Xeon Quad Core has been installed elsewehere.

stephenw10

Depends what you want to do with it. Bare in mind that it has a smaller power supply and possibly less cooling that the Lanner box it's built on.
I wouldn't put some thing with greater than a 65W TDP in it. That means you have to use the 'S' variant of any Core2Quads. The Xeon requires some mods to fit the 771 cpu into the 775 socket.

Steve

mgfair

It will be used for anti-virus/spam protection and load balancing of 2 super fast FTTH internet connections provided by PCCW in Hong Kong.

mgfair

Having looked at the Intel site - Thinking of using the Intel Core 2 Quad Processor Q9550S. Seems to be the fastest at the given power specification.

stephenw10

What speed are those connections?
Whilst I've not benchmarked the box (and I'm only running an E4500 anyway) I'm not sure it's going to get to 2Gb/s if that's what you have. Not with those packages anyway. :-\

Steve

mgfair

The bandwidth of PCCW's fastest fiber service is 1000Mbps…...but doubt I ever achieve anything near that!

spiro2k6

I'm looking for a replacement for my firebox x750e and came across this thread. While looking at the processors this supported (socket775) i came across a small adapter that allows you to use a LGA771 processor in a 775 motherboard which opens up the possibility of running xeon processors in this box which can be had for cheap.

for example http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Xeon-SLANT-E5462-2-8GHz-12M-2800-LGA771-CPU-Processor-1059-/261767606847?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3cf290b23f

The xeon e5462 that i linked to benchmarks higher than a core2quad q9550 and has a FSB of 1600Mhz

Anyway, it was just some food for thought, i found it interesting and thought some of you may as well.

stephenw10

At least one person is using a modified 771 CPU such as that:
https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=43574.msg421215;topicseen#msg421215
I don't think 1600MHz FSB is supported though. 1333MHz is.

Steve

chpalmer

Ive got a friend who has a core2quad q9650 that he is going to donate to me. :)

This one should work in an XTM 5 shouldn't it? Ive got 4gb of 800mhz DDR2 ready to go in as well.

stephenw10

That's a 95W CPU so it might be pushing the cooling system and psu which are smaller than that in the FW-7580 it's based on. That never claimed to support C2Q either but we know it does. ;)

Steve

chpalmer

Ill upgrade the PSU to something bigger and adjust the fan speed accordingly. It will be a good experiment. ;)

Thanks Steve!

stephenw10

It's likely it will work fine anyway but the XTM PSU is 150W against the original 220W. Unless you're testing it you probably won't push it anywhere near the 95W level. ::) I'll be interested in your results.

Steve

chpalmer

Ill throw everything together as is and see what happens before touching the PSU.

Next upgrade will probably be a hard drive so the eventual extra power will let me sleep better.

unknown001

I'm please to report that with the help of people on this forum, I'm able to get Xeon L5410 to run on XTM510. Using 771 to 775 adapter.

Now, I'm looking to flash the bios. I followed directions on from earlier on this thread. I was able to download the xtm5_83 file and verified md5 matched. Before going any further and breaking the xtm5, I want to see if someone can point me in the right direction. Maybe I should just stick to the watchguard bios? After installing flashrom using the method "pkg install flashrom." I'm getting the below error. I cannot read or write to the flash device because flashrom could not detect the chip.

[2.2-RELEASE][admin@pfSense.localdomain]/root: flashrom -p internal
flashrom v0.9.7-r1711 on FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE-p4 (i386)
flashrom is free software, get the source code at http://www.flashrom.org

Calibrating delay loop... OK.
Found chipset "Intel ICH7/ICH7R". Enabling flash write... OK.
No EEPROM/flash device found.
Note: flashrom can never write if the flash chip isn't found automatically.

stephenw10

Ah, that's disappointing. :(
I don't know why it might not be detecting your bios rom. Since we know it works I would suggest going back to an earlier version just to do the bios flash.
Nice work with the Xeon though. :)
50W TDP is nice, do you have any power figures for box with that installed?

Steve

unknown001

On Intel Xeon L5410
79.6 Watt at boot
66.4 Watt while running idle
Have not ran it to full capacity, because I don't know what to use on pfsense for load test. Any pointers would be appreciated.

Got some good and bad new to report about my xtm5 experience, I have two of these. One is the xtm505, this is the dead unit I was trying to revive from early post with SPI header cable. The motherboard is version 1.2 with Watchguard OS 11.5.1. I was able to bring this unit back to life and it's running xtm5_83.rom. Thanks stephenw10.

Strangely, the other unit, a xtm510 with motherboard version 1.0A (with Watchguard OS11.6.1) could not be flashed. I suspect Watchguard may have implemented some type of software lock on the bios in later Watchguard OS. Meaning that if you upgraded the Watchguard it will flash the bios with a software lock. Because I have tried multiple times with SPIPGM2 and flashrom and could not detect this bios.

Untitled.jpg_thumb

stephenw10

Unlikely a software lock but maybe a hardware lock of some kind. The reader is seeing code FFFFFF so every bit is 1. That's almost certainly because it's not reading it correctly and that could easily be because it's not powered or that some pin on the SPI connector is grounded (or requires grounding) etc. The earlier board powered the chip when it was in standby but there's no requirement for it to do that, most SPI programmers provide power so you can programme the chip even with the board completely unpowered.

Steve

chpalmer

Success!

:)

Running 4GB of DDR2 800 which I might try and replace with something closer to 1200mhz later. Or just leave it for now.

4core.jpg_thumb

stephenw10

Nice! :)
Any power consumption figures with that CPU? How does it compare with the L5410 above?

Steve

taherio

Hello watchguard gurus, I have been trying to follow the steps mentioned to get pfsense running on "xtm 505".
I am able to dd the nanobsd image to the 1GB cf card no trouble, however when I try to boot the LCD always stays at "WG Bios v1.3".
So I assume there is something that I need to do through the console to let the system boot past the bios ?
( I also tried removing the cf and putting a sata drive with nanobsd image, same results ). Will the LCD display something specific when boot is completed successfully ?

My BIGGEST problem is that I cant seem to get the console (RJ45) to serial com port working correctly ( I never dealt with RJ45 to serial before ) , I connected it to my pc using putty ( 115200 8 N 1 XOFF/XON) I also tried 9600 for speed, I tried putty on windows and ubuntu, I also tried minicom, screen and cu with no success. the closest thing I could get is some random non-readable characters that was streaming non stop for a while, I thought it could be interference with the wire of some sort ?. Then most of the time I connect to console keep rebooting and not get a single sign on putty. I tried different cable to make sure that the cable is not defected. I really ran out of ideas I feel that the answer is so simple but I am just too stupid to get it.

I would be really grateful if someone was able to give me some insight regarding how to get past this , I have read the thread but I no hint for the noobs like me :D seems like you all are experienced pfsense flashing users.

(I am also new to this forum and this is the first thing I wrote here)