Silver Peak FW-7551A-SV1: almost…

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

Silver Peak FW-7551A-SV1 is a six-port Intel Atom based device:

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RAM is for some reason ECC. All ports are serviced by Intel i354 NICs, which, it appears, have hardware bypass functionality (the device makes clicking noises when it turns on, which is a telltale sign of relays used in hardware bypasses). The bypasses are probably configurable in BIOS (they usually are).

There are two storage devices, a CF card and a SATA SSD. The SSD is installed in a tray mounted above the motherboard. To access the CF card slot, the tray must be removed, which is not difficult, as there are only three screws holding it in place.

The eagle-eyed among the readers probably noticed the FW-7551A part in the name, and yes, as that part suggests, this is indeed a rebranded Lanner FW-7551A. With some added skullduggery. (I know, I know; I've been using that word a lot lately...)

The skullduggery is double-sided.

One side is, you just can't get into BIOS. I partially defeated that by resetting the jumper located next to the CMOS battery seat. Now I am allowed to press Esc or Del at boot to enter BIOS password, which I, of course, do not know. So in case anybody is in the know, please clue me in... (Incidentally, the console speed for BIOS is set all the way down, at 9600 bps.)

Installing OpenWrt was easy; just put it on a CF card and swap that card in, replacing the stock CF card. But then, the other side of skullduggery kicks in: the device appears to have a hardware watchdog, which restarts it after about 10 minutes of uptime.

At that point, I called it quits. I have no idea how to disarm the watchdog. But again, if anyone is in the know... well, see above. :smile:

2

What OS did it have natively? Can you connect to the console and watch it boot? If it's Linux, you may see a note about whatever hardware watchdog driver they are using when it loads.

Failing that, you may want to talk to Lanner. They may be more forthcoming than Silver Peak. I doubt the hardware watchdog was actually added for Silver Peak - it's probably also in a stock FW-7551 but not enabled by the BIOS. A mild subterfuge of pretending to be interested in your own OEM purchase and inquiring about the possibility of employing a hardware watchdog timer may be enough to get the information out of them as to what it is.

I normally don't like subterfuge with hardware manufacturers, but the inclusion of a poison pill in hardware they sell to you is beyond infuriating and worthy of using some cheap tricks in return.

3

It's some kind of mangled Linux... I can connect to the console, but for some reason I can't make screen write a console log (I wonder if this is by design).

As to the identity of the watchdog, I think it's Lanner's standard one. They include some sample code to control it on the resource CD they give to their customers. There's a brief note to that extent in the FW-7551 manual...

Also, found some references to a possible way to stop the watchdog. On general-purpose Linux distros, people have had success with adding the following to the rc.local:

modprobe i2c-i801
modprobe i2c-smbus
modprobe iTCO-wdt

Looks like these modules are available on OpenWrt as kmod-i2c-i801, kmod-i2c-smbus, and kmod-itco-wdt. So I guess I'll try installing them and adding lines to rc.local per above...

4

Same as the Velocloud, you might need to add the kernel param too, as posted in Trying to install OpenWrt on a Velocloud 520-AC - #7 by frollic

5

Does nmi_watchdog=0 go into grub.cfg?

6

yup, as a kernel param, like console= root= etc.

7

Thank you! Will try it some time in the next day or two and report here....

8

For the avoidance of doubt on my part, this needs to go into the early "general" part, not into a menuentry, right?

Assuming that's the case, what's the correct syntax? Do I need the set keyword, as is done for root=:

set nmi_watchdog=0

or not, as in the serial directive?

9

sorry, it was console, not serial, just add it to the linux line.

menuentry "OpenWrt 22.03.5" 
{
linux /boot/vmlinuz root=xxx rootfstype=ext4 rootwait nmi_watchdog=0 console=tty0 console=yyy noinitrd 
console=ttyS0,115200n8
}
10

Ah, I see! So it is to go into a menuentry. Thank you for clearing this up for me! As I said before, I will try it in the next day or two and report back.

1 Like
11 
screen -L /dev/tty…

will write out the log to screenlog.0.

12

I think I got stupid and placed the -L key AFTER the reference to the console device...

13

I definitely got stupid... Here's the session log, from boot to shutdown:

TAB Key on Remote Keyboard To Entry Setup Menu
Silver Peak Systems
BIOS Version number: 201208-001
BIOS Revision: C
BIOS Date: 04/24/2018
Version 2.16.1242. Copyright (C) 2013 American Megatrends, Inc.
Press <DEL> or <ESC> to enter setup.                                                                           
Press any key to continue.

Press any key to continue.
SPSV.1.0 Loading stage2...
Press any key to continue.
   [Repeats multiple times...]
Press any key to continue.



    GNU GRUB  version 0.97  (619K lower / 2081208K upper memory)

-------------------------------------------------------------------
 0: VXOA 8.1.7.19_76539 #1-dev 2019-09-06 13:39:59 x86_64 sptest@vxoa-build7:unknown
 1: VXOA 8.1.7.19_76539 #1-dev 2019-09-06 13:39:59 x86_64 sptest@vxoa-build7:unknown
 2: VXOA 8.1.7.19_76539 #1-dev 2019-09-06 13:39:59 x86_64 sptest@vxoa-build7:unknown
 3: VXOA 8.1.7.19_76539 #1-dev 2019-09-06 13:39:59 x86_64 sptest@vxoa-build7:unknown
-------------------------------------------------------------------

      Use the ^ and v keys to select which entry is highlighted.
      Press enter to boot the selected OS, 'e' to edit the
      commands before booting, 'a' to modify the kernel arguments
      before booting, or 'c' for a command-line.

The selected entry is 0 
  Booting 'VXOA 8.1.7.19_76539 #1-dev 2019-09-06 13:39:59 x86_64 sptest@vxoa-build7:unknown'

root (hd0,4)
 Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83
kernel /vmlinuz ro root=/dev/sdb7   img_id=1 loglevel=4 panic=10 console=tty0 c
onsole=ttyS0,9600n8   fbcon=scrollback:128 crashkernel=64M  
   [Linux-bzImage, setup=0x3800, size=0x3c2620]

INIT: version 2.86 booting

		Starting system
Version: VXOA 8.1.7.19_76539 #1-dev 2019-09-06 13:39:59 x86_64 sptest@vxoa-build7:unknown
Starting udev: [  OK  ]

Setting clock  (utc): Tue Jun 20 07:21:40 UTC 2023 [  OK  ]

Setting hostname localhost:  [  OK  ]

Checking filesystems
Checking all file systems.
[/sbin/fsck.ext3 (1) -- /] fsck.ext3 -a /dev/sdb7 
ROOT_1: clean, 20210/263296 files, 192986/526128 blocks
[/sbin/fsck.ext3 (1) -- /boot] fsck.ext3 -a /dev/sdb5 
BOOT_1: clean, 18/34272 files, 14260/136552 blocks
[/sbin/fsck.ext3 (1) -- /bootmgr] fsck.ext3 -a /dev/sdb1 
BOOTMGR: clean, 19/66528 files, 16765/265072 blocks
[/sbin/fsck.ext3 (1) -- /var] fsck.ext3 -a /dev/sdb10 
VAR: clean, 969/2626560 files, 1095414/5242880 blocks
[/sbin/fsck.ext3 (1) -- /config] fsck.ext3 -a /dev/sdb3 
CONFIG: clean, 20/131616 files, 12551/263064 blocks
[  OK  ]

Remounting root filesystem in read-write mode:  [  OK  ]

Mounting local filesystems:  [  OK  ]

Running vpart script:  [  OK  ]


INIT: Entering runlevel: 3

Entering non-interactive startup
Starting system logger: [  OK  ]

Starting kernel logger: [  OK  ]

Starting internal_startup:  vm.panic_on_oom = 2
[  OK  ]

Setting MAC lan0 to 00:1B:BC:17:32:A5
Setting MAC lan1 to 00:1B:BC:17:32:A7
Setting MAC mgmt0 to 00:1B:BC:17:32:A2
Setting MAC mgmt1 to 00:1B:BC:17:32:A3
Setting MAC wan0 to 00:1B:BC:17:32:A4
Setting MAC wan1 to 00:1B:BC:17:32:A6
Running renaming interfaces
Reading interface settings: Mapping MAC: 00:1B:BC:17:32:A5 to interface name: lan0
Mapping MAC: 00:1B:BC:17:32:A7 to interface name: lan1
Mapping MAC: 00:1B:BC:17:32:A2 to interface name: mgmt0
Mapping MAC: 00:1B:BC:17:32:A3 to interface name: mgmt1
Mapping MAC: 00:1B:BC:17:32:A4 to interface name: wan0
Mapping MAC: 00:1B:BC:17:32:A6 to interface name: wan1

Checking for unexpected shutdown
Checking for user initiated reboot
Detected user initiated reboot.
Starting sp_netdev:  [  OK  ]

Running system image: VXOA 8.1.7.19_76539 #1-dev 2019-09-06 13:39:59 x86_64 sptest@vxoa-build7:unknown
Applying initial configuration: 

Starting external_startup:  Huge pages on node 0: 2981
[  OK  ]

Starting pm: [  OK  ]


Unauthorized access prohibited.  This product or the use of this
product is covered by one or more of the following U.S. Patents:
9,626,224; 9,613,071; 9,584,403; 9,549,048; 9,438,538; 9,397,951;
9,363,309; 9,363,248; 9,253,277; 9,191,342; 9,152,574; 9,143,455;
9,130,991; 9,092,342; 9,036,662; 8,930,650; 8,929,402; 8,929,380;
8,885,632; 8,811,431; 8,755,381; 8,743,683; 8,738,865; 8,732,423;
8,725,988; 8,595,314; 8,489,562; 8,473,714; 8,442,052; 8,392,684;
8,370,583; 8,312,226; 8,307,115; 8,225,072; 8,171,238; 8,095,774;
7,948,921; 7,945,736; 7,698,431; 7,644,230; 7,630,295; 7,571,344.
By using this product, you agree to be bound by the terms of Silver
Peak Systems Inc. End User License Agreement.

The End User License Agreement can be viewed at
http://www.silver-peak.com/download/latest/EULA.html

silverpeak-1732a2 login: admin
Password: 
Last login: Tue Jun 20 04:59:12 from 127.0.0.1


In order to use the VXOA Appliance Manager Web User Interface, please verify
or configure a management IP address as instructed in the Quick Start Guide.



silverpeak-1732a2 > reboot

Rebooting - This may take some time...

System shutdown initiated -- logging off.

This will take a few minutes...



Unauthorized access prohibited.  This product or the use of this
product is covered by one or more of the following U.S. Patents:
9,626,224; 9,613,071; 9,584,403; 9,549,048; 9,438,538; 9,397,951;
9,363,309; 9,363,248; 9,253,277; 9,191,342; 9,152,574; 9,143,455;
9,130,991; 9,092,342; 9,036,662; 8,930,650; 8,929,402; 8,929,380;
8,885,632; 8,811,431; 8,755,381; 8,743,683; 8,738,865; 8,732,423;
8,725,988; 8,595,314; 8,489,562; 8,473,714; 8,442,052; 8,392,684;
8,370,583; 8,312,226; 8,307,115; 8,225,072; 8,171,238; 8,095,774;
7,948,921; 7,945,736; 7,698,431; 7,644,230; 7,630,295; 7,571,344.
By using this product, you agree to be bound by the terms of Silver
Peak Systems Inc. End User License Agreement.

The End User License Agreement can be viewed at
http://www.silver-peak.com/download/latest/EULA.html

silverpeak-1732a2 login: 

[  127.298816] w83627hf/thf/hg/dhg WDT: Unexpected close, not stopping watchdog!

IStopping pm: [  OK  ]

Shutting down kernel logger: [  OK  ]

Shutting down system logger: [  OK  ]

Starting killall:  [  OK  ]

Sending all processes the TERM signal... 
Sending all processes the KILL signal... 
Saving random seed:  
Syncing hardware clock to system time 
Running vpart script:  
Turning off swap:  
Unmounting file systems:  
Running vpart script: 
Please stand by while rebooting the system...

The only reference to the watchdog I can see is this:

w83627hf/thf/hg/dhg WDT: Unexpected close, not stopping watchdog!

And even that happens in the shutdown stage...

14

JFTR: From own experience, Lanner seems to summarily dismiss end user requests. I tried to ask the same thing for another device they OEM'd for another company (a FW-7543 manufactured for Rohde & Schwarz with a BIOS password baked in) and they didn't even bother to acknowledge my existence.

15

Perhaps OT here.
Depending on how the password was implemented, you might get rid of it, by removing
the battery when cold booting, then reinserting it again, once in BIOS.
Worked on my Trustwave TS-25.

16

Been there, tried that, the BIOS password is entirely unphazed by a (documented) reset via jumper or by (brute force) removing the coin cell for half a day. I'm fairly positive it is baked into the BIOS defaults.

17

That has been my experience as well. Removed the battery, repositioned the jumper, the password is still there.

18

Guess I got lucky, but I also think it's a matter of timing.

19

I gave up. After I ran the stock OS to record a boot log, all ports stopped working. OpenWrt detects them all, but none can pass data. Even indicator lights no longer illuminate on connection.

Found this repository on Github:

https://github.com/duffolonious/bpwd

It ostensibly has what I need, but I am no longer willing to spend time on this puzzle. There are other puzzles waiting to be solved...