Successful Install on Watchguard Firebox X700!

Nicklas

Thanks Steve :-)

I found indeed 2 type of silent fans to replace the 3 fans on the back of my x700.

A) Fractal Design FD 40mm 13.0 dba max. 4000rpm
B) Scythe Mini Kaze 14.0 dba max. 3500rpm

But the CPU FAN it blows it all to the back and no replacement found as yet for that one.

stephenw10

Well woc38 above said:

replaced default CPU fan with a similar new Titan radial fan (TFD-B6015M12B) and used a Zalman Fan Mate 2 to control its speed and noise.

Looks likely.
You could just try a fan controller on the existing fan. What ever you do make sure you monitor the cpu temps.

Steve

woc38

@Nicklas:

Krisstian, I notice you replaced the FANs, I would like to do that as well, could you please advise which fans you brought and where? Are you pleased with the result is the sound level dropped and nearly silent?

I choose these fans:
@woc38:

replaced default 3 case-fans with 3 Noiseblocker XM2 fans, used 2 Y-fan-cables and attached them to the fan2 connector on the motherboard

replaced default CPU fan with a similar new Titan radial fan (TFD-B6015M12B) and used a Zalman Fan Mate 2 to control its speed and noise.

The 3 case-fans are fairly silent. The radial fan does give some noise, but less then the original one. With the Fan mate I can control the noise to a more acceptable level.
It still makes noise though, I can't sleep next to this red machine… I installed mbmon (pkg_add -r mbmon) to monitor temperature and fanspeed.

Some news about 2.0RC3

Today I upgraded to the current snapshot (2.0RC3(i386) built on Wed Aug 3 01:54:50 EDT 2011). Previous version was the snapshot from 2 aug.
After the reboot: Yes! I saw the first userland console output since long time: the console menu seems to work again
Sometimes it seems to hang (non-responsive). After a minute or so, the menu is rebuilding and back
For the first time since 2.0 I get Watchdog timeouts on the LAN interface. There is virtually no traffic: 1 laptop directly connected to the LAN port accessing the webinterface.

I tried different install methods: 2.0RC3 nanobuilds on microdrives, 2.0RC3 on a harddisk with embedded, uni- or SMP kernels, 1.2.3 upgrades. Massive editing of /etc/ttys. The boot procedure and the pfSense startup is always visible through serial console. It always stopped after "bootup complete" (when the system is entering userland?).
This is a HD full install with a uniproc. kernel. Until today there was no console output after the "Bootup complete" message.

There is also a new problem: I can't assign interfaces anymore via the webinterface. I have 2 out of 6 interfaces enabled (WAN and LAN) and I want to add a 3th one (OPT1).
After clicking interfaces - assign - plus-sign the webinterface reports with "Interface has been added" but there is no new interface in the list.
I can add them without trouble through serial console or SSH and after that they are visible in the webinterface.
This problem also existed in the snapshot from 2 aug.

More of you have serial console output after upgrading to the latest snapshot?
And what about assigning interfaces?

stephenw10

Hmm, strange. There doesn't seem to be anything directly related to any of those things in the recent commits list: https://github.com/bsdperimeter/pfsense/commits/master

Steve

woc38

Hmmm,

My joy didn't last for long… After rebooting a few times guess what... no serial console anymore (and no watchdog timeouts).
Seems like the re driver has some effect on the console... After a watchdog error, the console begins to respond (for a while).
Earlier I noticed that a SMART error also triggers the console for a short time.
And this X700 unit also suffers very slow halt times (except when the console is working, then it halts in good old 1.2.3 times).

Time for an other device... I read some things about the X750e series (and a-like). Are these units "problem free"?

stephenw10

@woc38:

I read some things about the X750e series (and a-like). Are these units "problem free"?

They have Marvell Gigabit interfaces. The four built in use the sk driver and work absolutely no problem. The X550e only has these.
The X750e and higher models have four additional interfaces on a plug in card that are supported by the msk driver.
Unfortunately the msk driver in FreeBSD 8.1 is buggy and can lock up. I've only experienced this when I was load testing the box.
The driver has since been patched so it will be fine in pfSense 2.1. The driver could be backported but it's beyond my skills. ::)
The box has some nice features though and is very upgradable. Read through the thread for more.

Steve

kolkjaer

Not Sure I any off you can help…

I have a x700 with a 4GB Cf card where I have flashed pfSense-2.0-RC3-4g-i386-20110621-1821-nanobsd.img
But I can't seem to get it working.
I don't get any console output, only thing that it dose is to flash green in the arm/diarm LED.

Any ideas ?

stephenw10

Any problems flashing it? Try using the 1GB or 2GB image instead, it will definitely fit on your 4GB card.

Steve

kolkjaer

No the flashing went well.

I have in the mean time tryed with the org CF card, and it dose the same.
It has been working up to around midt last week, with both 1.2.3 and 2.0RC3
So looks like there is some thing worng with the box :'(

stephenw10

Test the CMOS battery. Re-seat the CPU and the RAM. Does the LCD show anyting at all?

Steve

kolkjaer

Have tryed all 3 things.
No the LCD just light up.

leefuji

hi all!
I'm just getting into this pfsense/firebox thing and I'm really confused on which Image to use to load up pfsense on my Hitachi 40GB laptop drive which I will install in the x700. Can anyone point me to the right image I need or link.

ps. keep in mind its a clean install of the latest pfsense which I do believe is 2.0RC3 if 'im not mistaken.

Thanks ;D
Lee

stephenw10

The latest version is the daily build from the snapshot server however 2.0r3 is probably fine unless you find a specific bug that needs fixing.

On a hard drive you can use the full install version. The easiest way to do this is boot the install CD, built from the ISO image, in a laptop. Install to the hard drive and then transfer to the firebox. You will need to boot up the laptop into pfsense once in order to turn on serial console. When you first boot the image in the firebox it will probably fail to boot and you will have to manually enter the location of root.

It's really much easier to use a CF card! ;)

Steve

leefuji

@stephenw10,
Cool didn't know about the Snapshot server link .. thanks for that. Sounds good I will download the ISO image file and follow the instructions as exaplained earlier in this post. Now if I wanted to go with the CF would I still use the ISO image or is there a different one that is recommended to be used with a CF card? I read something about an embedded edition but didn't get if that was something CF or HD specific.

Thanks
Lee

stephenw10

If you use a CF card you need to use the NanoBSD image (a special version of FreeBSD for embedded applications). You can find them on the snapshot server or the main download site. E.g. here: http://snapshots.pfsense.org/FreeBSD_RELENG_8_1/i386/pfSense_RELENG_2_0/nanobsd/pfSense-2.0-RC3-1g-i386-20110905-0445-nanobsd.img.gz

You need to write the image directly to the CF card with some appropriate software like physdiskwrite as described here: http://m0n0.ch/wall/physdiskwrite.php

You can use any of the images that will fit on your card (1GB image on a 4GB card is fine) however manufacturers seem to continuously reduce the actual size of their cards so you may find the 4GB image doesn't fit on your 4GB card. Just use the 1GB image. ;) There is almost no advantage to using a bigger image.

Steve

leefuji

@Steve,
Thanks you very much. I will try to find me a cheap 2GB-4GB CF card. I do have 10+ laptop HD's sitting around but I prefer the CF solution to avoid any mechanical issues that might arise with those older beat up Laptop HD's :D. I might need to kick up the Installed RAM on the x700 from factory 256MB to 512MB since the writes go towards the RAM instead of the CF as far my understanding goes from what I've read.

Regards,
Lee

stephenw10

The NanoBSD image has no swap, mounts the partitions noatime to prevent writes to the card when reading files and all logs are sent to ram. The CF card will not suffer from write failure with 256MB.

Steve

leefuji

Ok cool.

valthonis

Hey guys, I've been reading through this thread for a while.

I've been considering picking up a used X700 off of ebay, mostly for nostalgia reasons as a couple jobs back we used Watchguard as our primary firewall/router/vpn source. So the idea of picking one up and using pfsense on it is very intriguing.

But…I'd really like to limit my headaches.

What is the easiest way to get this working? I don't plan to swap out the cpu or add additional memory, this is really for my home network so at most we're talking a VPN tunnel or two, a couple PCs, and QoS. Overkill I know. I also have a spare 40gb notebook IDE drive in its the easiest way.

Thanks guys, appreciate all the effort that has gone into this!

stephenw10

Using a hard drive requires some modification to the case as there isn't drive caddy provided, just a blank.
To install to the drive you will need to first install it into a laptop (or pc via an adpater) and boot that from the pfSense install CD. Then follow the prompts to install to the drive. You will have to boot the laptop into pfSense in order to turn on serial console access in the GUI. When you swap it back into the firebox it will likely ask you for the location of the root partition as the path will have changed. Once it's booted you can change that.

Using a CF card is far easier. Just write the NanoBSD image to the card, insert it into the firebox and boot. Unfortunately the current pfSense (2.0 release) has a strange bug that can cause the serial console to not appear after the initial setup. There's a workaround for it though in the forum.

If it were me I'd go the CF route. ;)

Steve