I am thinking of trying OpenWrt on a WatchGuard Firebox M300. That’s an entry-level rack-mountable device made by Lanner and running on a Freescale T2081 processor.
There are installation instructions on the wiki:
but there’s a part that’s a little unclear. First, the instructions say,
Write the sdcard image to an SD card.
OK, but which image and write how? There are three images available for download: ext4, squashfs, and FIT. A FIT image, if I understand correctly, is simply copied to the SD card like a regular file. An ext4 or squashfs image, conversely, is usually expanded onto a card using dd or a similar tool.
Then, at some point, there’s a directive to do this on the command line:
So it would seem the FIT image has to be present on the boot media. So do I just copy the FIT image onto the SD card, and the bootloader picks it up from there after configuration changes are made? And there’s no need to expand an ext4 or squashfs image onto the card?
Also, in case someone is in the know: would M300 firmware work on an M200 device? The M200 appears to be nearly identical, except for less RAM and a half-size Freescale T1042 processor. I understand that on most targets, the answer would be no, but I have no idea how compatibility works (or doesn’t work, as the case may be) on QorIQ…
The instructions appear to be fairly clear in the Wiki. You need to write either the ext4 or squashfs image to an SD card. You need to choose, there is a wiki page somewhere explaining the pros and cons of the ext4 vs squashfs image. Follow the instructions on the wiki at https://openwrt.org/toh/watchguard/firebox-m300#current_installation_from_stock_firmware. This explains that Stock U-Boot will not boot, wait for it to fail. Then enter the commands from the wiki page.
Also, in case someone is in the know: would M300 firmware work on an M200 device? The M200 appears to be nearly identical, except for less RAM and a half-size Freescale T1042 processor.
Fairly certain that the M200 will need an updated DTS file, although certain sections may end of being re-used.
Do not, under any circumstances, buy the M200. It's not "just' a question of a DTS, but will need further (considerable) debugging/ developing of kernel and musl to (eventually) start working. Unless you're willing to step in and pick this up, it's not going to be supported (ever).
Thank you! I think I understand this a little better now.
I downloaded an ext4 image, expanded it onto an SD card, and took a quick look at the contents. Sure enough, there’s a file named watchguard_firebox-m300-fit-uImage.itb on the boot partition. Basically, a u-boot image is placed inside a firmware image. Not knowing this made the discussion of images difficult to understand at the first blush.
I know that stintel tried to get the M200 working along with the M300, there are challenges that made this attempt fail so far. I'm not saying that it's going to be impossible, but at least that it has been tried and failed before (something about kernel and musl not agreeing about CPU features and musl expecting more than the CPU can deliver; I never had any powerpc gear, so I only watched from the sidelines, without caring too much about the details).
I would look for used parts to get 19 inch case and use an x86.
150 is dollar is tough but should be doable. New systems start around 250 dollar iirc. But at least with x86 and Intel nics you have far fewer issues....
Nah, I can just get an M370 / M470 if I wanted to go that route (I haven’t bought one in a while, but the last two I’ve got were USD 70 and USD 90; now, of course, prices are higher, but you can still get a working device for a little over USD 100).
I specifically want to try out the M300, because it’s cheap (I just scored one on eBay for USD 50), but runs on a quad-core eight-thread processor at 1.8 GHz (so there’s some hardware muscle, consistent with an entry-level rack-mountable). Also, no one knows what to do with them (with stock firmware, they’ve gone EOL in 2023), so this could be an interesting repurposing opportunity…
