IP265 Flash Size "mini"IDE Disk Port and upgrade options

[chas040977]

Hi Guys,

This is my first post and will more than likely be a flood of posts from me now!

I have worked in my organisation for some time now and slowly been taking on more responsibitlity for our firewalls and now am seen as the lead.

We have a complete nokia Firewall infrastrusture with IP265's at our 9 regional offices and an IP330 and an IP530 at our head office.

My problem is that the IP265's are not all that great, it was heralded to be the solution to the dying disks of our previous ip120's, by our IT director. Anyway we have had a couple of the 265's Flash cards fail Which leads me on to my question.

I see inside the 265 there is a CF flash Card of 512 MB. As we now have R65 and I would like to get the org up to spec from R60 I find that the 512Mb is rather limiting! I am guessing using bootmgr I shoudl be able to do a fresh install. but my question is this.

There is an IE port on the Motherboard. I have tried in vein to get the system to boot from it ignoring the Flash card but it just wont do it! The nokia box does recognise the Hard disk and I think to a fashion it uses it when you run a fresh install. the problem being it still thinks its diskless and even though you specify the HArd disk for the destination of install it still eventually fails when you install R65 Package...

Is it possible to get the system to only use the IDE drive? Is there a Jumper of switch on the motherboard or in BIOS that can be changed.

Im hoping to get around this so we dont scrap our 265's ( I just wish the person who decided to buy had listened to me when I said 512Mb is a bit limiting!!)

Many thanks in advance


Charles Game

NHS CFSMS

[mcnallym]

Master of understatement the IP265's are a pile of ****.

Please bear in mind that apparently NGX R65 is not supported on IP265's by Nokia, despite there being an available Check Point wrapper for it.

You can get upto R62 however.

Do you have the external flash card for the IP265's as this will allow you to move the packages over to this allegedly optional disk that is in fact necessary, and is stated as such in the release notes for the Nokia HFA when installing an HFA on the 265 platform. I am guessing that you don't.

See if you can get your reseller to bully Nokia into supplying them free of charge for you as without them you are in for a world of pain and misery. We were able to do this arguing that the flash card isn't really optional so should have been provided in the first place. That and we were going to rip the Nokia's out from all the customers locations, (around 30). You will still encounter issues without very careful reading of the Nokia and Check Point websites, release notes, documentation but they are solvable, without the flashcard then don't bother.

Alternatively see if there is a tradein (and demand a good discount as well off Nokia) to get upto the IP290. This is a much better box and has a 4Gb flash installed.

When the 265 launched then R55 wa the platform and the 512Mb External Flash card was optional. When NGX launched however then the 512Mb internal is too small and the previously optional 512Mb flash card became essential and was shipped as standard with the IP265.

Due to this and many other complaints Nokia have stopped selling the IP265. You can still get the IP260 however which is the same but disk based and works splendidly.

You can barely, and I mean just barely fit NGX onto the internal card and apply a hotfix.

Step 1: Bootmgr fresh install IPSO version
Step 2: Configure IPSO with Interfaces, Routes etc
Step 3: Install Check Point wrapper
Step 4: Install Check Point HFA
Step 5: Run cpconfig to configure the Check Point package.

If you run cpconfig prior to install HFA then the HFA install fails as runs out of disk.

You then repeat this for everytime you need to apply a HFA to the IP265.

Good luck (you'll need it) with what you decide to do.

[chas040977]

Thanks for the Quick reply.. I had seen the packages on there for 512mb R65 and see your angle there, we do have the extra 512mb flash card in the front of the 265's. I was trying to work out if its possible to get the internal IDE port working properly.. ISPO does see a HDD if you connect it and also does use and format it, it just gets its knickers in a twist after the install and runs out of disk space .... annoyingly !

I installed a 20GB Laptop IDE drive into one and worked that much out!

Charles

[redbear]

Take a look this thread, it might help ..
Unofficial Nokia Flash Upgrade :: Systura :: Where Information becomes Knowledge

[Reaper]

I can confirm that this is working. I replaced all 512MB internal flashes with 1GB ones. Now I can run my IP265 devices with IPSO 4.2 and R62 without problems. I use 512MB external flash for logging (actually the same flash cards that were internal before, just with PCMCIA CF adapter)

[chas040977]

Originally Posted by Reaper

I can confirm that this is working. I replaced all 512MB internal flashes with 1GB ones. Now I can run my IP265 devices with IPSO 4.2 and R62 without problems. I use 512MB external flash for logging (actually the same flash cards that were internal before, just with PCMCIA CF adapter)

Has anyone tried the IDE port that is on the motherboard, I am probably going to just put 4 GB Falsh cards in these but it would be nice to know if the IDE port can be used.....

Thanks for the replaies so far, the last post had a great article!!!

[simion]

Originally Posted by Reaper

I can confirm that this is working. I replaced all 512MB internal flashes with 1GB ones. Now I can run my IP265 devices with IPSO 4.2 and R62 without problems. I use 512MB external flash for logging (actually the same flash cards that were internal before, just with PCMCIA CF adapter)

Now try upgrading to HFA02 ;)