As I was getting ready to call it quits for the day, relax and watch something nerdy on YouTube when I had a catastrophic hardware failure on my IP fire router, firewall system. I didn’t actually know it was the router that failed until I went through all my other checks first. This is a short story on what I did to get my home connected to the big scary internet again.
I first employed this IPFire system back in early 2019 and have been incredibly happy with it. My goal was to utilize some older 32-bit, Pentium 4 hardware that I had lying around because it was perfectly capable and since these were Dell Optiplex systems, I had a lot of faith in their reliability. The only modifications I made to the hardware was to remove the video card because it wasn’t needed and add a PCI network card. Setting this machine up as my firewall / router was a simply fantastic learning experience and it has worked reliably for me for many years. Looking back at my notes, I made a comment how I needed to replace the spinning rust hard drive with an SSD because it probably wasn’t going to last. Surprisingly, that’s not what failed on this machine, it was something else.
The Hardware Failure
On the 3rd of Jun, 2024, everything was fine until it wasn’t.
21:11
I didn’t initially think that I was having issues with my IPFire box, initially. I took a few other actions in restarting my access points as I have had issues from time to time with them not doing their Access Point job but that didn’t solve the issue. I still had the annoying exclamation point on my system tray but I now noticed other machines having the same aggravating symbol.
21:23
I went to my server rack to see what else could be giving me issues and as it turned out, the IP firebox was off. I thought, maybe I was really “giving it the onions” too long today I turned it on and the fans were just spinning wildly, confirming this may be all clogged up with dust. It seemed like the best first course of action was to vacuum the thing out and make sure that it was breathing properly. Set the machine on a work surface, opened it up, which is a super slick process because Dell did a GREAT job on the Optiplex GX620.
Once completed, I popped the side panel back on and put it back in place but when I powered it on this time it immediately shut off. I did try it a few times with the same results. The machine was dead, Jim.
21:37
It appeared that this computer finally gave up the ghost. Although I could take the time search for what the problem may be. It was getting late, there were some enjoyable videos on restoring retro tech to be watched and I really wanted to get everything back to normal as quickly as possible. I took my sad Pentium 4HT back into my lab and seek out a suitable replacement.
When I looked at my shelf of technology, fairly well organized, there happened to be two identical machines but one I noted had no PSU, the other with a sicker once running a Linux distribution. This was to be the one to save the day. So, I did indeed happen to have an identical machine sitting on my shelf because… of course I do.
The Replacement
Once running MX Linux, my replacement machine had been sitting on a shelf for several years. I do recall when I was testing MX on this machine to see if I could still use it for streaming Internet media but recalled that it was hardly a great experience. It was time to pull this long retired 32-bit Pentium 4, out of retirement and back into service to save the day.
21:45
The machines were side by side, I noted that this era of Dell desktops are a lot of fun to work on. They are easy to get into, no sharp edges to slice your hand, everything pops into place with a terrific tool-less design. It did not require much effort, outside of removing some cable management bits. I transferred over the hard drive and the second network card into this machine. I didn’t take the tine to test it. It was time to put it in place and see if it would boot.
21:54
I put the “new” machine on my 2-post rack where the previous had sorted it’s last packet and thankfully, this machine POSTed and booted up without an issue, except, there is a need for a CMOS battery. “Sure, I’ll get to that,” I thought, as I hoped I could reconfigure the interfaces without issue. Since the second network interface card came from the previous machine, that interface did indeed configure properly. The on-board NIC has a different MAC address and IPFire recognized that, leaving it un-configured. I had to go find a Logitech K400+ keyboard to make the configuration but I did not remember the root password. It also was not in any of my password managers nor in any notes. I was a bit worried so I went through a series of half a dozen or so possible passwords that I MAY have used to see if they would work.
SUCCESS!
It was that one!
But now, I didn’t know what to do, time to consult my initial installation notes for a clue and yet there wasn’t anything there either. Searching the forums and documentation did not reveal the answer so then I consulted Co-pilot, my new AI friend, in desperation, I asked but did not get the answer I needed but eventually. The right command was revealed that was all so simple I am almost too embarrassed to say…
Configuring IPFire
The only thing left to do was to configure the IPFire box so I could finally rest for the night.
22:17
The one actual takeaway from this whole process is, configuring or re-configure your WAN (red) and LAN (green) ports is to log in as root in the terminal and run:
setup I took far too long looking for this little nugget of information that I had to record it somewhere. This was, ultimately, my only stumbling block. Everything after this was gravy. The ncurses setup is easy enough to follow but for fun, I’ll put the steps here.
The to configure the interfaces, select the “Networking” section which makes perfect sense. That will take you to the Network configuration menu. Here is where you select the Drivers and card assignments submenu.
This will then display your current assignments. Since I did not take pictures of the process, I was frantically trying to be done with it, this is just a screenshot, going back into it.
This is where the setup tool will show you the card assignments and the ability to select and remove card assignments. I had to remove GREEN and add the newly available MAC address to this.
Another nifty feature (not pictured) is to select a potential card and have the activity lights steadily blink to easily identify then properly assigned.
For my process, I removed the no longer valid GREEN NIC and added the new NIC onboard the computer. Once complete, IPFire will restart the network service and once again, the traffic was flowing again like a fresh, spring, trickling the cool goodness to all that needed the refreshment.
It was now 22:28 and it was time to go to bed. I realized, I had worked up quite a sweat and made myself excessively dusty so a few extra minutes of personal hygiene was required before I turned in for the night.
Final Thoughts
I’m very grateful I had a spare machine on the shelf but I do realize this is a bandaid solution. This machine is old too and doesn’t have much left on it either. The I will have to make it a point to get my replacement hardware assembled, configured and directing traffic soon. Until then, I will have to keep a close watch on this and make an effort to deploy the new hardware, very soon.
To be continued!
References
IPFire | Open Source, Linux based, Firewall, Install and Configuration
https://www.ipfire.org/
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