Here is the tutorial on how to flash image for Firewalla Red, Blue and Blue Plus, to flash Firewalla Gold, please consult this doc: https://help.firewalla.com/hc/en-us/articles/360048626153
Firewalla is a general computer with a full Linux distribution. (Pretty much like Raspberry Pi, if you know what that is). Many of our early supporters really wanted Firewalla system to be "open". Not only open source, but open to modifications, or at least giving some room to 'play'.
We kept our promise and left the SD card slot and made it user-accessible.
We also uploaded the Final image to Github. Some of the cool things you can do
- Get a bigger / better SD card and you can actually do programming on the little thing. (Python, Node.js, and even GCC are already on the box!)
- Install things like 'tshark'. Which allows you to monitor all traffic on the network.
- A couple of our supporters expressed that they don't trust the shipping process, in this case, you can use your own flash and download the public image to it.
If anything goes wrong, you can use the build-in 'Factory Defaults' to fix. But in case you got creative, here is the instruction to recover:
Step 1: Download Image
Choose the Box and image version below, and don't forget to unzip the .gz file after downloading.
Firewalla Red
- Stable Image
sha256: 7425195a1b04ff5fbe11910dc8cd31ceb8af0364e7cf0e5813dadc7ef8063273 - Beta Image
sha256: e903cd6e0dfec0cf5ccb24530940d36aa01303afe6d1d92de5d59c3433a4b87a
Firewalla Blue
- Stable Image
sha256: 98e7110c26a9ff4b14eb2edb43aeffbcd1c058baef801d53799d64912202204b - Beta Image
sha256: d7a101fc0e9ebb0a37caa8d1a99e49a835bf16f8f67bf5cc2596914045f5d431
Firewalla Blue Plus
- Stable Image
sha256: b1bc7b49bb34b7cd96fa81e441357a12537ae9202bdd28a92a1375a190bb4fed
Step 2: Download a flash program, we use etcher.io
- If etcher doesn't work on macOS Catalina (10.15 or above), here is a workaround.
Step 3: Flash the new Image
- Take the SD card out from Firewalla Box
- Use etcher to load the image you just downloaded to the card.
Step 4: Set up with the new Image
Put the card back into the SD Card slot, boot up Firewalla and set it up as new
Step 5: Remove the old Firewalla from the App
- Launch the Firewalla App, you should see the old Firewalla icon on the App's main screen
- Tap and hold on the Firewalla Box icon, tap Unpair this box -> Unpair, the Box will be removed from the App.
Step X: Migrate data from your previous pairing
Go to Settings -> Advanced -> Migrate from other boxes. Here is the detailed tutorial on Box data migration.
A workaround to use etcher on macOS Catalina (10.15 or above)
- Open Terminal.app
- Run this command in the terminal:
sudo /Applications/balenaEtcher.app/Contents/MacOS/balenaEtcher
- Type your MacOS login password when asked.
-
Here is an open issue on GitHub etcher project to track this issue: https://github.com/balena-io/etcher/issues/2833
Comments
5 comments
When Flashing device, don't forget to "Reset" the SSH password for your device as the default SSH password for image is not secure (and probably known).
There is no need to reset SSH password. The password will change itself after pairing. And will change itself once while. It also changes if you enter and exit support mode, and after each reboot.
I can't get my imac to recognize the microSD card that came with it using any means I have on hand. I had placed it into an empty SD adapter and directly into the SD slot on the imac as well as several different card readers. If I was to grab another card to put in here, what format should the card be before attempting to flash it with etcher?
Scott, if the card cannot be recognized, then the card is bad. For etcher to write a new card, formatting is not needed it, the program will dump a bit exact copy of the image
I had real problems with resetting this Firewalla blue and in the end I had to buy an external Micro SD card reader to try and flash the card. The card would not flash so I ended up buying a new 32GB micro SD card and that was flash-able and I used the beta image file to get it working and now I am reconfiguring it from scratch. Had to uninstall the Firewalla App too and reinstall.
Currently I have added the box but it says its initialising and will take about 1 minute.
Its been running for 5 minutes now so still waiting hence my time to write this. Wish me luck!
Its not straight forward and has taken me half a day to sort this so far. Surprised the card failed .. its only 4-5 months old
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