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    Watchguard Firebox wont boot on internal CF Card

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    • stephenw10S
      stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
      last edited by

      No reason why it won't from 16GB card although that is unusually large for the age of the hardware.

      If you're running the standard Nano image that's the point where the console switches to the serial port. Are you looking there?

      Steve

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      • K
        King13p
        last edited by

        Looks like I'm able to boot off the 16gb CF Card now but I'm getting READ_DMA Failure. Any Idea? I disabled the DMA Setting in the bios, but Still no luck.

        Let me know what you think. Thanks!

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        • stephenw10S
          stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
          last edited by

          What image did you write to the card?
          The CF slot in the firebox does not have the connections to support DMA (a common 'feature' in CF slots  ::)) so if you try and use DMA it will timeout as you see and fail to boot. Disabling DMA in the BIOS seems to make little difference once past the bootloader. The standard NanoBSD images, with serial console, have DMA disabled for this reason but the Nano+VGA images do not (it was built originally for a box that required DMA).
          If you are running Nano+VGA images you can interrupt the boot loader and disable DMA as described here:
          https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Boot_Troubleshooting#NanoBSD_on_Newer_Hardware
          Obviously set thise to 0 to disable it.

          Or just use the standard Nano images.

          Steve

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          • K
            King13p
            last edited by

            Thanks for the reply, a friend of mine was borrowing my CF Card to see if it would work in their box (not a firebox) and I guess he put the VGA image on there to test it out. I reloaded the Serial image and am now seeing it through the console session. Thanks for all your help, I'm super excited to test the rest of this out later and configure pfSense.

            One last question, Any idea if this USB port is live on the firebox?

            I soldered on those connections I ripped off another dead Motherboard and I can't seem to get it to do anything.

            The USB header to the left works fine, Just not CN_USB2.

            Let me know when you get a chance.

            Thanks again.

            Lenny

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            • stephenw10S
              stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
              last edited by

              If you look close to CN_USB2 there are a number of components absent from it's 5V supply (C387, C396, U42 etc). I think the rest of it is connected, it may work with a self powered USB device.
              I have never been able to get hold of a vertical USB socket to attach one on the other connector. I'll have to look out for one on a dead motherboard.

              Steve

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              • K
                King13p
                last edited by

                Hi Again,

                I'm having issues again with this unit, Uncorrectable PCI Express Error keeps coming up when I try to assign an IP to an Interface, Any device connected to that interface doesn't get an ip, just a 169 number. :(

                Any ideas? I seen one guy saying the same thing about his x550e and he said flashing the firmware on the nics solved the issue but I can't seem to find any information about doing this or where the firmware even is. Let me know what you think.

                Thanks

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                • stephenw10S
                  stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                  last edited by

                  The 'Uncorrectable PCI Express Error' only happens on the msk interfaces, the four furthest from the LCD, and it has seemingly no adverse effect on the operation of the interface.
                  In an attempt to stop the other big with those NICs, the watchdog timeout issue, I spent a while trying to get a newer 'firmware' file them. I eventually succeeded in extracting one from a Mac-mini which has the same NIC. After uploading it to the firebox that particular NIC no longer displays 'Uncorrectable PCI Express Error'. However it didn't fix the timeout issue and the error doesn't stop it working so I didn't proceed any further.

                  Unless of course you have found a new error due to some unusual setup.  ;)

                  Steve

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                  • K
                    King13p
                    last edited by

                    Yeah, I eventually got an 8GB card and it boots up but I haven't gone through and configured any settings just yet,

                    A co-worker was interested in what I was doing and he purchased a x750e off ebay but is having issues.

                    I tried using a 256 mb card to load the image of FreeDos from that download link on the main wiki and I keep getting a missing operating system error.

                    I also tried using the older freedos image and I get the same thing, However if I download my own copy of FreeDos or Win98 Boot Disk those work just fine,

                    His board doesn't have USB so I'm not able to type anything in like I was on my board. I could solder it on for him but I rather not take the risk on someone else's board.

                    I'm guessing with these firebox's there are a few different versions because I was able to boot off some 128mb cards on my watchguard box but his would only boot off a 256mb card.

                    Probably cause thats what he had in there when he purchased it, Mine wouldn't boot off 256mb but would boot 128mb. But neither of my boards had any luck in booting the pfsense version of

                    FreeDos. Is there anyway to rewrite how it boots? I believe thats the reason why it isn't working. Or if you know of another way for me to write the img to the CF card I can try that as well, I

                    tried using PhysDriveWrite, Win32ImageWriter and even plugged it into a Mac using DD. All result in Missing Operating System.

                    Any help would be appreciated! Thanks!

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                    • stephenw10S
                      stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                      last edited by

                      There are at least two motherboard variants in the X-e boxes and they look like they're different manufacturers but I assume made to the same spec. They use the same BIOS.
                      The failure to boot is due to some problem with the recognised geometry of the card. Since the CF cards are only pretending to be an IDE harddrive they can present almost any geometry. The card I used to create the FreeDOS image was 16MB. It has booted in everything I've tried it in so perhaps try to get a very small card if you can.
                      I've just had to disconnect my test box as I'm going away for a few weeks so I can't check right now but from memory the LCD only shows 'Missing Operating System' if it has tried to boot correctly but for some other reason is not able to. If it fails to boot because of a card geometry problem it just says 'Booting OS…' and nothing happens. That implies that either there is no OS on the card or the card isn't showing up at all for some reason. Does it boot the Watchguard OS? I assume you're not hearing the three beeps  when trying to boot the FreeDOS image?

                      Steve

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                      • K
                        King13p
                        last edited by

                        Hi Steve,

                        Sorry I didn't mean Missing Operating System came up on the LCD on the front of the firebox, I meant I plugged in a VGA Graphics Card into the PCI slot and thats whats coming up on the monitor. The box does boot into the Watchguard OS. The card does work for Windows 98 Boot Disk and FreeDOS, When I have a card that doesn't have anything on it then I get a Disk boot error, with your image on the CF Card I get Missing Operating System…

                        Would it be difficult to create my own version of FreeDos? I believe my biggest issue is I'm not aware of how to get FreeDOS to allow you to connect over Console. Is that the code inside of AutoExec.bat? And I think a few days ago when I tried it it said I had to press enter at the boot screen? I will check again.

                        Thanks again for your help.

                        BTW, I just wired up my Firebox and its running great!

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                        • stephenw10S
                          stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                          last edited by

                          Creating the FreeDOS image is relatively easy. I think the hardest part was finding some way of writing it to the disk initially. I forget exactly whay tool I used in the end but there was plenty of info in forums etc. Switching to the serial console is easy, I did it with a line in autoexec.bat as you suggested. Have a look in my image.

                          Writing this from the airport so probably won't be able to reply to anything for while. Pretty sure they don 't have mid-atlantic wifi yet (or it's rediculously expensive!).

                          Steve

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                          • K
                            King13p
                            last edited by

                            Nevermind, I got it all working,  8)

                            Turns out I had to use the original CF Card for it to work,

                            Every card I wrote to would not boot FreeDOS on the Firebox but would boot it on a real PC.

                            I talked to my co worker and he said it would be okay to try, I made a backup of his firebox os and then applied it to a 256MB cf Card I owned which errored out saying not enough sectors

                            even though they were the same card, I then tried putting the image on a bigger card 512mb. I couldn't believe it but that actually booted up in the firebox.

                            After that I knew I had a good working backup in case anything went wrong so I went ahead and pushed FreeDOS to the original CF Card and the firebox booted it up,

                            I was then stuck for an hour with issues of "ERROR READING FROM DEVICE COM1 Write Fault"

                            After searching the warehouse for an old Serial Cable I ended up trying 4 different Serial Cables before one actually worked.

                            I was having trouble with performing a Backup of the bios so I ended up just typing the code out in the autoexec.bat file and putting pause afterwards.

                            I seen the bios got backed up quickly, I then typed out the command for bios 8 in the autoexec.bat file and before you knew it I was running pfSense.

                            Thanks again for all your help!

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                            • stephenw10S
                              stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                              last edited by

                              Nice one.  :)
                              Having a serial cable that doesn't support hardware flow control can really give you a hard time.

                              Steve

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