Successful Install on Watchguard Firebox X700!

drallibor

2u riser card might not fit with the cover on. be perfect for doing an install though.

Magnacus

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:

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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

Phil

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

Magnacus

@Magnacus:

(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 :'(

Sifter

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.

Sifter

Is anyone else having issues with correct memory being recognized? Im still at 256meg even with a 512meg pc133 dimm installed.

DimitriRodis

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

MMan

@Sifter:

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.

Sifter

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

Sifter

Anyone?

MMan

@Sifter:

Anyone?

I have Kingston KVR133X64C3/512 in X700 and it works fine. :)

tehtrk

@drallibor:

More info on the keyboard connector
This place isnt far from me. http://www.cablesandconnectors.com

They 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 connection

And this is how you turn a perfectly good PS2 keyboard into a perfectly good watchguard-only keyboard :)

geewhz01

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

tehtrk

@geewhz01:

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)…

geewhz01

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.

Sifter

@geewhz01:

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

How are you mounting the harddrive in the case? I sure would like to find the factory made caddy.

geewhz01

@Sifter:

How are you mounting the harddrive in the case? I sure would like to find the factory made caddy.

I took the existing mounting plate out and cut the back piece off, basically to not have to get a longer cable and try to route it. I then drilled 2 holes at the back of the plate and put the drive on/attached with the 2 screws. It's not pretty but was the quickest fix I found at the time. I do wish there was a better caddy for it but just made what I had work. Drive isn't going anywhere and seems to be working just fine so far.

tehtrk

Here's a link to a demanufacturing doc with some good pictures for reference.
http://www.watchguard.com/docs/corporate/wg_coreDe-MFR_instructions.pdf

As for the official hard drive upgrade from Watchguard, I don't think they ever came out with it.

Sifter

I scrapped the whole hard drive idea and installed the full version on a 4gig Hitachi microdrive on the cf slot.

tehtrk

Is that solid state flash or are you talking about one of those tiny hard disks with the moving parts just like a full size HD?