Firewalla Gold Pro: How to Flash Installer Image

Reminder: after resetting or flashing a new image, you will need to pair with your unit again (https://firewalla.com/install). Your old Firewalla icon will not work.

This tutorial explains how to flash the image of Firewalla Gold Pro boxes. To flash:

• Gold SE boxes, see this guide. 
• Other boxes in the Gold series, see this guide. 
• Firewalla Purple series boxes, see this guide.
• Firewalla Red, Blue, and Blue Plus boxes, see this guide.

In case anything goes wrong and the "reset to factory default" option does not work, here is how to recover: 

Step 1: Prepare the installer Image

• Do not delete or unpair the previous instance in your Firewalla mobile app. You can restore configurations from it later using the Migration feature.
  
  
• Download the Firewalla Gold Pro installer image: 
  • Image, download link: gpro-fireupdater.img.gz (Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS)
    MD5sum: 522f39d0d2bf6e489b2d37ebb3a4d74d
    sha256: 9d5c4e430eb87021742ab1ca042ea832337e043a7f828ab4b9fa9d5376171615
    
    

• Download a flash program. We use etcher.io in this example.
  Note: if Etcher doesn't work on macOS Catalina (10.15), please see below for a workaround. 
  
  
• Launch the etcher and select the image you've downloaded before.
  
  
  
  
• Plug a USB drive with at least 16 GB disk space into your computer, and select it as the flash target. 
  
  
• Select Flash! 
  
  
• After flashing, unplug the USB drive from your computer.

Step 2: Install the Image on your Gold Pro

1. Plug the USB drive into the other USB slot on Firewalla Gold Pro (please DO NOT remove the red dongle, DO NOT use a USB hub). 
2. Power cycle the Gold Pro (unplug the power cable and plug it back in) to start flashing the Gold Pro. A display monitor may be connected via the HDMI port to watch the flashing process.
3. Wait for the installation process to complete.
   

   Status Light	Process
   Blinking Green	Preparing
   Blinking Blue	Installing
   Blinking Red	Verifying
   Solid Red	Fail
   Solid Blue	Success

4. If flashing fails, the status light will be solid red. The box will beep 3 times every 5 seconds. 
   See Troubleshooting below.
5. Once you see the status light is solid blue, and the box will beep twice every 5 seconds, the flashing process is completed successfully. Unplug the power cable to power off the box, then unplug the USB drive. (Please don't unplug the USB drive with power on)
6. Plug the power cable back in and follow the installation guide to configure your Gold Pro in whichever mode you have selected.

Troubleshooting

Flashing should take 10-15 minutes. If it takes substantially more than that, there may be some issues. Here are some things you can check:

1. Check that the image is for Gold Pro, not Gold.
2. Check that the USB drive was imaged successfully with Etcher.
3. Try a different USB drive or a pair of SD card with SD card reader.
4. In case of failure, if a monitor has been connected via HDMI, you may take a photo of the screen output and submit it with a support case.

Step 3: Restoring Configuration

When installing the new version, the iOS app will use "Quick Setup" to restore the previous network configuration.

Then please use Settings -> Advanced -> Migrate from other boxes to restore rules and device names after installation. See the tutorial on how to migrate: How to migrate data from one Firewalla Box to another? Note: please do not unpair the old box before the migration. Just use the USB to flash, install, and migrate. After migration, test that the box is fully restored. When you are satisfied that things are restored, you can tap and hold on to the previous Firewalla icon, and tap "unpair" to remove the previous pairing. There is no undo for this action.  

How to flash image file to USB drive via Linux command line (Warning, Pro users only)

# Make sure the device file is the device file of the USB drive, flashing to the wrong device file may cause unexpected data loss
gunzip -c <image_file> | sudo dd of=<usb device file> bs=32M status=progress

# Example
gunzip -c gpro-fireupdater-0.0618.img.gz | sudo dd of=/dev/sdc bs=32M status=progress

Known Issues

1. Etcher prompts for user confirmation before flashing in Windows 10

Solution: Start Etcher with administrative privilege

2. Etcher stuck during flashing in Windows 11

Solution: Revert Etcher back to an old version. v1.18.11

3. Etcher fails to start flashing in macOS

Solution: Unmount auto-mounted partitions from the USB drive by running the following commands in Terminal

x=$(diskutil list | awk '/external/ {print $1}')
sudo umount ${x}s1 ${x}s2

4. Etcher doesn't work on macOS Catalina (10.15)

Solution: Here is an open issue on the GitHub etcher project to track this: https://github.com/balena-io/etcher/issues/2833

 Here is a workaround you can use before etcher fixes this issue.

sudo /Applications/balenaEtcher.app/Contents/MacOS/balenaEtcher