Successful Install on Watchguard Firebox X700!
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It is a little bit offtopic, but today I wanted to test the pfSense-Installation
again on my X1250e, but the device seems to be broken :(
I did nothing since my last test about a month ago, but now I have
no text written on the LCD and the LEDs (which used to blink somehow while
booting) just all light up steadily and don't blink anymore.
That behavior is also with the original CF-Card from WatchGuard.
CMOS-Reset didn't fix it…Does anybody have any tips? I simply cannot believe the box should be
dead :-/Thanks a lot for your help as I would be really happy to get pfSense working
on the X1250e :-)Best regards,
Chris
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Hi Chris,
Get down to basics, check that the CF card holder has no bent pins - remove ram then re-seat. If you did anything with the CPU remove heat sink and take out the cpu check thermal paste is not over flow and re-fit.
Try to connect a serial cable onto the box via the com port and see what happens in terminal.
I think there are some pins on the board that set the clock rate of Vt and cpu freq
One way to clear cmos remove batt: power up then remove power cord from the back of unit leave for 15min the replace batt fix back the power cord and power up from wall socket switch
For video output you need a VGA pci card but for this you may need to remove the motherboard. I still do not have pinout's for the firefox x500 keyboard but may need to do some volt testing on the six pins next to what look likes a IDE slot top middle.
The output on the LCD maybe controlled by the config file in the OS on boot up I think
/etc/grub/menu.lst may hold a line on the kernel
Hope this helps
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I did put a video card in my x1000 using a 1u pci riser card I got off ebay. The keyboard connector on the motherboard of the x1000 is a standard ps2 kb connector, nothing special. It was relatively easy to wire up a connector I removed from an old mother board to the watchguard. I made the cable long enough so that eventually I would be able to mount it out the back of the unit. The video card fit ok with the entire drive bay assembly removed. Theoretically you could put a wireless card in here that pfsense would support as an access point.. or usb ports.. whatever. I mostly wanted the video card so I could easily install ubuntu on the box.
More info on the keyboard connector
This place isnt far from me. http://www.cablesandconnectors.comThey have on this page http://www.cablesandconnectors.com/PIX/CC-085.pdf item BRK-PS2-2x4 which I believe is the exact part if you dont want to go through the hassle of building a cable yourself. If you feel like building one.. well, they have the parts for that too.
The 1u riser card I bought is a reverse direction or Right angle card so that cards hang over the motherboard. You could I guess get a normal left angle card and cut a slot in the side of the case. This would allow you for diagnostic purposes easy access to cards for temporary purposes. It was approx 5$ off ebay from a store called Knightdiscounts. If there was one available I would try and get a flush mount reverse 1u so that the card almost sits flat on the pci connector instead of the quarter inch that mine does. That little bit would look better in the flip down bay on the outside of the x1000.
Somebody said something about onboard video. THere is none one the x1000. There is a place on the motherboard where they have a video connector marked out, but all the chips necessary to make it run are missing and solder filled. Possibly on later models they have it, but on mine its not there.
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Thanks for this info, just got hold of left hand side u2 riser card from old server. Have the U connector ready but this is what I need to understand
–----------------------
: : : : : : : : : : : : : : FDFireBox x500 motherboard
X X -- p1
X X X X |
|_________________________________________
| 6no Cables
|
| This is the underside of old motherboard
p6 X X --
X X X XFront face of PS2
Have you soldered the cables in this patterns "1 > 1" - "2 > 2" - "3 > 3" - "4 > 4" - ditto
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correct.. soldered the wires like an extension cable off the motherboard. 1=1 2=2.. etc.
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2u riser card might not fit with the cover on. be perfect for doing an install though.
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I just did some testing with the hardware on these things, they currently have a 1.2 Ghz Celeron processor. I swapped it out with a 1.4 Ghz Pentium 3:
Copyright
1992-2007 The FreeBSD Project.
Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
FreeBSD is a registered trademark of The FreeBSD Foundation.
FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE-p11 #0: Sun Feb 24 16:38:29 EST 2008
sullrich@builder6.pfsense.com:/usr/obj.pfSense/usr/src/sys/pfSense_wrap.6
Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz quality 0
CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) III CPU family 1400MHz (1403.19-MHz 686-class CPU)
Origin = "GenuineIntel" Id = 0x6b1 Stepping = 1
Features=0x383f9ff <fpu,vme,de,pse,tsc,msr,pae,mce,cx8,sep,mtrr,pge,mca,cmov,pat,pse36,mmx,fxsr,sse>Works perfectly! So if you have any old p3s laying around, swap em out and get a little more performance! Also these boards do support 512 MB sticks of PC133, so as soon as I find some I will be upgrading that as well.Does anyone know a way to test the performance difference between the two such as ipsec encryption speed or anything?</fpu,vme,de,pse,tsc,msr,pae,mce,cx8,sep,mtrr,pge,mca,cmov,pat,pse36,mmx,fxsr,sse>
Hi,
I tried that too, but my Firebox isn't booting.
Did you just swap the CPU? Had you to change anything, like setting a jumper or so?(My P3 is a PIII-S SL6BY, 1400Mhz, 512KB, 133Mhz Bus, 1,45V)
EDIT: My Board is a WG-X66 AV1.0B
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Great tutorial. I had some major issues, however, during setup.
I installed from the live cd after putting the laptop drive into an old laptop. I then booted from it and cu (Linux serial console tool) repeatedly disconnected from the serial. This (I guess) missed the mount point option and made the boot fail with an invalid mount. I eventually ended up booting back into the live cd and modifying fstab from the terminal there. Once I did this, the box booted ok but cu continued to disconnect. I connected it up to my other machine and used puTTY, which didn't have such problems.
Moral of the story is, don't use cu.
Regardless, it's working fine now. Next step is to look at swapping out the CPU and upgrading the memory.
Phil
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(My P3 is a PIII-S SL6BY, 1400Mhz, 512KB, 133Mhz Bus, 1,45V)
EDIT: My Board is a WG-X66 AV1.0B
I got an other P3 CPU stepping:
PIII-S SL5XL http://processorfinder.intel.com/details.aspx?sSpec=SL5XL
…but its still not booting :'( -
Has anyone modified their x700 to include wireless? If so, how did you route the antenna wire and where did you place the antennas on the box itself?
Im still looking for pictures of a hard drive mounted in the drive sled on an x700. Dont want to us CF because Id like to use packages.
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Is anyone else having issues with correct memory being recognized? Im still at 256meg even with a 512meg pc133 dimm installed.
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If you are having problems with watchdog timeouts on these devices, that problem may have been resolved, but we need testers.
Please see http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,15669.0.html
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Is anyone else having issues with correct memory being recognized? Im still at 256meg even with a 512meg pc133 dimm installed.
You need double side dimm to fix that problem.
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So which out of this list would qualify?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010170147%201052107967%201052407863%20105233066&name=512MB%20-%201GB
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Anyone?
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More info on the keyboard connector
This place isnt far from me. http://www.cablesandconnectors.comThey have on this page http://www.cablesandconnectors.com/PIX/CC-085.pdf item BRK-PS2-2x4 which I believe is the exact part if you dont want to go through the hassle of building a cable yourself. If you feel like building one.. well, they have the parts for that too.
Or you can do it with spare parts if you have them. I just used one of many old keyboards, hacked off the connector, and determined pinouts by testing continuity from the bottom side of an old motherboard and the (now removed) ps2 connector from the keyboard. Then I used a spare USB motherboard -> pci plate (for additional external USB connections on the back of your PC). I lopped the motherboard connector off of that, cleaned up any extraneous wires, and spliced the keyboard wires to the correct usb wires.
Awesome ASCII art pinout below:
1 NC \_ . ._/ . . . . / | | \ / | | 4 / | NC / 3 2 NC 1__. .__/ 2__. | .__NC 3__. .__4 Braided bare wire, which is connected to the outer ring on a male PS2 connector, is chassis ground. NC == no connectionAnd this is how you turn a perfectly good PS2 keyboard into a perfectly good watchguard-only keyboard :)
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Ok I have the cf running fine but am trying to put the full version on a laptop hd via the 44 pin connector. I booted to a cd and installed it to a 30gb laptop drive. I put it in the fb and I can never get anything to come up on the console with the drive installed. Is there any trick to it that I must do to even get anything on the console?
Andy
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Ok I have the cf running fine but am trying to put the full version on a laptop hd via the 44 pin connector. I booted to a cd and installed it to a 30gb laptop drive. I put it in the fb and I can never get anything to come up on the console with the drive installed. Is there any trick to it that I must do to even get anything on the console?
Andy
I was unable to boot anything but the CF using the IDE connectors until I had my rigged keyboard hooked up. that enabled me to get into the bios or select the boot menu option on boot. Until I could do that, all I got was a boot error on the LCD display and the POST staring at me on the monitor until I rebooted. I suspect that this is where you are at right now.
On a side note, does anyone know why I have to specify black as the color when I post here? If I don't, my posts are invisible white text on preview(maybe on posting, too, I don't know)…
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I figured it out, after installing to the hd I had to go into the interface and turn the serial console on. Once I did that i was able to see what was happening and I followed the first post to fix the boot issue.