Installation

I am looking at M0n0wall to replace our current firewall setup.  However, I am running into some problems that are driving me batty.

I have tried four different Dell Optiplexes with ver. 1.33 -- Two Optiplex 320s, an Optiplex 330 and an Optiplex 210L.  None of them will install version 1.33.  During the initial bootup, they all error out and give the "Reboot in 15 seconds" message.  After several days of troubleshooting, and playing with settings, here is what I have discovered.

If I turn off the USB ports in the BIOS, the machine will boot.  The problem is that once it is booted, I can't do anything with it because none of these Dells have provision for a PS/2 style keyboard.  I kinda backed into something that semi-works by installing ver. 1.236 which does seem to recognize the USB ports, doing the initial console setup, then going into the BIOS, shutting off the USB ports and booting with 1.33.  1.33 then recognizes the previous setup, updates it and runs.  Of course, I can not do anything from the console like change IP address, reset the password, etc. 

The other thing that I notice is neither 1.236 nor 1.33 seem to recognize the built-in NIC (which, if I recall correctly is an Intel Pro/100 VE) .  I have installed two old, old 3Com PCI NICs and both versions find them with no problem.

So basically my question is how can I get this to work with USB ports working and recognize both the internal NIC and the two PCI NICs?  Do all Dells have this problem?

As to being able to communicate with the console, have you considered trying a mon0wall image that supports a serial port console?

As for an unsupported NIC, about the only thing you can do is modify the image yourself with a driver you either compile yourself or can find precompiled for the appropriate version of FreeBSD. This is usually thought to be somewhat beyond the typical user's capabilities, assuming the source code for the driver is available at all.

Failing at getting the onboard NIC working, you could try using supported multi-port NICs to increase the number of interfaces. There are usually some good deals on used multi-port NICs on ebay. Determining if what you find online is actually supported or not is the risk here.

I guess I could go through the serial port, but I would probably have to buy or cobble up a serial crossover cable.

Is not being able to enable the USB ports a common thing with monowall?  I can kinda, maybe understand the NIC, although I am surprised that support for Intel NICs is not built in.  But USB ports?

Support for many Intel NICs is built in and, I thought that the Intel Pro/100 VE card is supported by the fxp driver.

If the NIC is not detected and made available on bootup, it's because it isn't recognized and no driver for it is loaded. If you can get booted far enough in to get to m0n0 via the WebGUI, then run the dmesg command via /exec.php to see what is actually being detected.

I am not sure to what extent USB is supported beyond things like flash drives.

Edit: Your card isn't listed in the FreeBSD 6.2 Hardware list, and since mon0wall 1.3 is built on this version of FreeBSD, the card likely will not work. Consider using the latest m0n0wall 1.8 snapshot instead, based on FreeBSD 8.2 which does support this card via the fxp driver.

Ok, I will try the 1.8 version (I assume this is beta?)

The version (1.33) I am using doesn't even support a USB drive.  I actually have to go into the BIOS and disable the entire USB controller to make it boot up.  I can't use a keyboard, mouse (no need for it on the console anyway), or any USB device whatsoever.  I find it strange that version 1.236 works fine with the USB controller enabled and was able to do the initial config from the console with it.  Otherwise there would have been no way to initially assign interfaces nor LAN IP address (short of using a serial enabled version).  It perplexes me that USB support would be removed in a later version.

Thanks for hanging in there with me.

1.8 is in develpopment, and not problem free yet. There is a separate forum for it, so if you do wind up being able to use it, report your experiences there.

http://forum.m0n0.ch/index.php/board,10.0.html


I think that the v1.33 CD version supports writing the configuration file out to floppy disk or USB memory stick. And I'm pretty sure that that version as well as the other images can be installed to a USB stick and boot it if the PC supports USB booting. But USB keypard support....I just don't know - I don't even own a USB keyboard yet.

Just downloaded and tried 1.8.0b477.  It allows enabling of the USB controller (and the keyboard works), and it recognizes the internal NIC card.  However, I can not attach to the webGUI when the LAN is assigned to the internal NIC.  Not sure if it something munged with the setup or whether it is not really working even though it is recognized.  I will have to play with it some.

I would be a bit leery of using a development version in a production environment, though.  Hopefully it will make it out of beta in time to actually be viable for us.

Thanks for your help.