Anyone knows ? cisco
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Does anyone know if it's possible to install pfsense on a cisco firewall?
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No, it is not possible.
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Thanks for your reply. Whats the limitation? Just curious :)
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PfSense on runs on X86 hardware. A lot of cisco gear is MIPS as far as I know although some is X86. If you could install it on an X86 variant it would probably run fine but Cisco put barriers in place to stop you like a bios that will only boot signed images etc. Did you have a particular box in mind?
Steve
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If the last owner dont reply I got a hell of a expensive brick .. Its a ASA 5510.
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If the last owner dont reply I got a hell of a expensive brick .. Its a ASA 5510.
Why did you buy it if you didn't know whether or not you could use it?
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Seems very unlikely to be possible. If it was someone would have done it and blogged about it.
Steve
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If he'd bought a big one (like the ASA 5580) that would perhaps be a possibility, as those seem to be "standard" rack servers. My last insight into an older 5580-40 revealed hardware that beared an extreme resemblance to a HP DL380G6 (or 7?) that was sitting right beside it ;) Just there wasn't the slimline dvd 3,5" slot but instead behind a front panel they glued a cf-card adapter. Very surprised by that (at that time) :)
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All Cisco ASAs (and all the PIXes before them) are quite plain x86 hardware, not really anything special about the components. Yes that's right, Cisco's big, bad "hardware firewall" (meaningless marketing term) is really functionally no diff than pfSense. It's a piece of x86 hardware running a software OS.
It used to be possible to build a "FrankenPIX" with a Pentium II Intel board and Intel NICs back in the day, I had one myself for hacking and learning purposes quite a few years ago. Might still be possible with ASAs, haven't looked into it.
But the ASA hardware will not boot anything other than the ASA's OS, it's stock x86 hardware, but Cisco cripples it in some fashion (BIOS maybe) so it won't boot anything other than ASA OS.
Not worth the hassle of messing with unless you want to hack for fun. There are enough Cisco fan boys out there that'll pay a premium for those boxes, which you can then turn around and buy a faster x86 system for the money, run pfSense, and have just as much of a "hardware firewall" as an ASA.
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Thanks for the answers.
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I have a Cisco PIX of some model or other, I forget which, think it's about 3 or 4 rack units tall to which I added a hard drive, a new MB, a couple gig of RAM, a P4, a couple gig NICs (and a fiber gig NIC as well), a new PS that supported the extra power connectors the P4 needs, and an extra fan or two. So it looked like a PIX until you took off the case or connected to the console and saw it was pfSense.
I never actually put it into use, as I wanted to button it up a bit neater inside, but just never got around to it. Mostly did it just to do it. It makes for a fairly nice pfSense box, but I just bought a WatchGuard XTM5 (running pfSense of course) that I'll be putting into place when we move to the new house just because it's a bit more powerful and looks a lot prettier. And it only takes up 1u which is nice when you're using a small wall rack.
