Remotely Activating Locator Beacon LED

[Timothy_Hall]

The Getting Started guides for the various appliances state that the Locator Beacon LED can be activated via a clish command or in the Gaia web interface, and not just by physically pressing the locator button.  Physically pushing the button helps ensure I'm working with the same appliance when I physically transition from front to back, especially when many appliances are rack-mounted in a big stack.  Nothing quite like accidentally pulling cables/power/fans from the wrong appliance.  😞

So I give up. What is the clish command to do this, and where is this option in the Gaia web interface? (Please provide a screenshot if possible.) The use case would be physically finding the appliance in a data center in the first place.  I can't find this remote activation option anywhere in the documentation. If it matters, the 29200 is the specific appliance I'm interested in.  Thanks!

[Bob_Zimmerman · Accepted solution]

SomeFirewall> set lcd location ?

Appliance location LED is located on the front panel of the appliance and can be used to identify the appliance.

SomeFirewall> set lcd location [Tab]

on   off

Edit: You can also see its state, so someone in the datacenter can hit the button and you can confirm it's the right box:

SomeFirewall> show lcd [Tab]
access      - Front panel access
backlight   - Use to show the lcd backlight configuration
location    - Use to show the lcd location LED state
screensaver - Use to show the lcd screensaver configurations

[Lesley]

Hi, I have no access now atm to gateways. But this appliance for sure has a beacon led. Note there is a button in the back panel, if pressed the location led on the front panel will blink. Can you try: set lcd location on  ?

Location LED

Off - Location beacon is turned off Blinking blue - Location beacon is turned on in Gaia Portal or Gaia Clish Solid blue - Location beacon is turned on with the Locator button Note - Turn off the Location beacon LED the same way you turned it on.

[the_rock]

Hey Tim.

What Bob provided is 100% accurate for clish. As far as web UI, there should be lcd option under maintenance tab on the left menu bar.

[Lesley · Accepted solution]

[the_rock]

Thats it!

[JozkoMrkvicka]

Another option how to identify correct device is to use ethtool with -p parameter:

-p --identify
              Initiates adapter-specific action intended to enable an op‐
              erator to easily identify the adapter by sight.  Typically
              this involves blinking one or more LEDs on the specific
              network port.

I personally never used it, but in theory you can select some (or more) not yet enabled physical port(s) to blink them like christmas tree and the one standing in front of device should be able to see it. The port blinking like crazy without any cable plugged in, is the one where ethtool -p parameter was used

[Bob_Zimmerman]

I used that a lot back before Check Point labeled which card slot was which. It works on most cards, but sometimes doesn't blink any visible LED. It works on the interfaces on the 3600s in my ElasticXL cluster, but does not work on any interfaces on the 3200 I use to manage it.