topic Re: MHO-140 Maintenance Mode in Hyperscale Firewall (Maestro)

MHO-140 Maintenance Mode

Daniel_Hainich — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 10:55:37 GMT

Hi,

i try to enter maintenance mode on mho-140. iam unable to enter username and password, the cursor is jumping back to first position.

20260223-113716.jpg

console is working, this occur only in maintenance mode.

daniel

Re: MHO-140 Maintenance Mode

emmap — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 11:25:52 GMT

Other than making extra sure you have the correct login details and correct serial settings:

https://sc1.checkpoint.com/documents/Appliances/GSG_Maestro/EN/Topics/Ports.htm#Consoleport

then I don't know why it would do this.

Re: MHO-140 Maintenance Mode

Daniel_Hainich — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 11:56:52 GMT

i triple checked the console settings. i used putty and xhsell8, but maybe mobaxterm or securecrt are working.

there are any special settings inside the tools i have to set?

Re: MHO-140 Maintenance Mode

emmap — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 11:59:26 GMT

The only settings for serial connections are the ones in the link there, around baud rate and whatnot.

Re: MHO-140 Maintenance Mode

Daniel_Hainich — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 12:24:25 GMT

no luck. SecureCRT, MobaXterm, Putty, Xshell, minicom(ubuntu) - all the same.

Re: MHO-140 Maintenance Mode

Timothy_Hall — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 15:13:42 GMT

Make sure you are using a proper console cable. The MHO-140 is very sensitive to the pinouts of the console cable, and using one with extra pins connected can crash the box, and could possibly interfere with the terminal handling in maintenance mode: sk184477: MHO 140 unexpectedly shuts down when connected to console servers that provide signaling other than RX, TX, and GND

Re: MHO-140 Maintenance Mode

Danny — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 14:32:20 GMT

The terminal tools I use are:

Windows: Tera Term
Mac: CoolTerm

Re: MHO-140 Maintenance Mode

WiliRGasparetto — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 19:49:05 GMT

This username and password belong to the Maestro owner account, and only Check Point TAC engineers have access to it. You will need to open a support case with Check Point to have this resolved.

This is different from regular Check Point firewalls, where you can simply enter your own username and password.

Re: MHO-140 Maintenance Mode

Lesley — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 20:00:51 GMT

BIOS is via TAC(for example to change boot prio). Console itself is possible:

https://sc1.checkpoint.com/documents/Appliances/GSG_Maestro/EN/Topics/Getting-Started.htm#:~:text=In%20the%20section%20Setup%2C%20select,Click%20Next.

I think Timothy is right, different cable will solve this. If the settings of emmap are set ofc

Re: MHO-140 Maintenance Mode

Daniel_Hainich — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 06:49:21 GMT

hi, i have tested with 2 different original cisco cables. 2 different notebooks, one with integrated serial port (win11), other device with usb2serial adapter and ubuntu. i used 5 different tools. i could update one of my mho to r81.20 take 120. it doesnt solved the problem. either its a strange setting in all tools so the mho is misinterpreting the inputs or there is something other wrong with 2 mho. and normal serial console is working without problem.

Re: MHO-140 Maintenance Mode

emmap — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 08:39:02 GMT

To confirm for sure, this is the Maintenance option from the grub menu you're trying to get into?

Re: MHO-140 Maintenance Mode

Daniel_Hainich — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 08:48:25 GMT

yes, it is the maintenance option from grub boot menu. in the meanwhile i testet also teraterm - no luck.

iam typing in the username wartung, after confirmation with return iam typing in the password and comfirm with return. after some seconds iam back on the boot menu.

(view in My Videos)

Re: MHO-140 Maintenance Mode

emmap — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 08:57:34 GMT

Is that a regular Gaia user? Maintenance mode needs to be entered with the user 'admin' and either the expert password or the grub password, depending on version and what was configured.

https://support.checkpoint.com/results/sk/sk118973

Re: MHO-140 Maintenance Mode

Daniel_Hainich — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 09:18:47 GMT

yes, i already tried the admin user and expert passwort.

Re: MHO-140 Maintenance Mode

Daniel_Hainich — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 09:48:53 GMT

hello,

i found the solution in sk177687. i tried to login with admin and admin-pass/expert-pass. but this was not working. after setting a custom grub-password and login as admin/grub-pass all is working. and the terminalsession should not be in fullscreen-mode.

@emmap was pointing to right direction, but my brain got stuck after i tried not working expert-password... sorry! your post is the solution.