Firewalla Orange: 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 Orange boxes.

• To flash other boxes in the Gold series, see this guide. 
• To flash other boxes in the Gold SE, see this guide. 
• To flash Gold Pro boxes: see this guide.
• To flash Purple series boxes, see this guide.
• To flash Firewalla Red, Blue, and Blue Plus boxes, see this guide.

In case anything goes wrong and the "reset to factory default" 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 Orange installer image: 
  • Download link: orange-0.1209.img.gz (Ubuntu 22.04 LTS) (Firewalla version: 0.1209)
  • MD5:  9991abf551cffbc29cfa50a47573123c
    SHA256:  57bb1413c2aaf298fa00458d25549fac5fad5162844ff9684b4e48302abcb1b9
  • NOTE: The file version in the download filename is for the installer itself not the enclosed Firewalla, which could be different. The version of Firewalla can be checked in /etc/firewalla_release after installation.

• 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.
  
  
   
• You will need a USB drive with at least 16 GB of disk space (which is not included in Firewalla Orange).
   
• Plug the USB drive into your computer, and select it as the flash target. 
   
• Select Flash! 
   
• After flashing, unplug the USB drive from your computer and plug it into the USB slot on Orange.
   

Step 2: Install the image on your Orange

1. Power off the Orange (unplug the power cable from the box).
2. Unplug all Ethernet cables from both Ethernet ports if any.
3. Insert the USB drive prepared in Step 1(flashed with installer image) into USB slot.
4. Power on the Orange (plug the power cable back in) to start installing Firewalla to Orange.

5. Check LED status and wait for the installation process to complete( ~20 minutes).

   Status Light	Process
   Off	Normal
   Solid Green	Booting
   Blinking Blue	Installing
   Blinking Red	Verifying
   Solid Red	Fail
   Solid Blue	Success

6. If flashing fails, the status light will be solid red. See Troubleshooting below.
7. Once you see the status light is solid blue, the flashing process is completed successfully. Unplug the power cable to power off the box, then remove the USB drive from USB slot. 
8. Plug the power cable back in and follow the installation guide to configure your Orange in whichever mode you have selected.

Troubleshooting

Flashing should take about 20 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 Orange, not any other model.
2. Check the downloaded installer image has the correct checksum(MD5) compared to the one from above.
3. Check that USB drive was flashed with installer image successfully with Etcher.
4. Try a different USB drive or use an SD card with USB card reader.

Step 3: Restoring Configuration

When installing the new version, the iOS app will use "Restore from backup" to restore the previous network configuration.

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 prepare an installer image via Linux command line (Warning, Pro users only)

# Make sure the device path is the device of your USB adapter, flashing to a wrong device file may cause unexpected data loss

# Example

gunzip -c orange-0.1121.img.gz | sudo dd iflag=fullblock of=/dev/sdc bs=4M 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