Blink directly from USB

[David_Brodin]

Hi,

I'm about to update/install a few gateways from the box. From the videos I've found I gather that in the simplest form, I should be able to copy the blink image to practically any USB, and just insert it into the appliance (if it's running r80.20+). The USB should be detected and blink should fire up and install the image on the USB, without any user input.

Is this true?

The appliance I'm testing on is an old 4800, but it's supported still and running r80.20 latest jumbo. But it's not starting the blink.

I've seen blink-logs that show that the USB is detected. But nothing happens after that. The USB device is found by linux.

The sk120193 isn't very explanatory on this part so I'm not sure if it's supported or not.

The endgame is to produce a bunch of blink images or USB's with different answers.xml. But if we have to manually start the blinking, I'm not so sure which way to go.

Thanks,

David

[Tsahi_Etziony]

Blink will not start automatically if you have an appliance that is already running and is post first time wizard. we wouldn't want someone to insert the wrong USB drive to an appliance and everything will be lost for him unintentionally...

So if you have an appliance fresh out of the box, simply inserting the USB drive will launch the Blink process. otherwise, you'll need to launch it on your own. it is still simple though - only one command. 

[David_Brodin]

Thank you for the response! Then it's as I thought, PnP USB should install.

But I've got the appliance (4800) as fresh as can be. I first reverted to factory settings, r77.10 (just a lab). Manually blinked it to r80.20 (jumbo) because PnP support and am now trying to plug-and-play blink it with r80.40, but it's not taking. I've never passed the first time wizard and continually get the warning when I log in. At most I added an expert password so I could log in and see what's happening, or not happening. I will now try to --reimage it.

I've tried two different USB-drives, both work when mounted. Extracted the tgz of the image and blink utility to the root of the drives.  Extracted the one but not the other tgz. Rebooted with the drives plugged in.

Yes, it is one command, after attaching the console, logging in, setting expert password, experting and mounting the drive. We will probably have to do it that way. The thought was to not have to do that though and just walk away after inserting a bunch of drives. Maybe even create some kind of intelligence that changed the answer file for the next appliance. I had grand ideas! 🙂

Edit: Is it that I'm trying to PnP an already blinked appliance? So I might need to reinstall (r80.20 for example) the appliance completely?

[Tsahi_Etziony · Accepted solution]

You got it right on your edit.

As far as I recall we introduced Blink pnp on a later release of R80.20, so just to be on the safe side, start with installing R80.30 using ISOMorphic. it should also work with the R80.20 ISO that you can download from the Check Point website, but in case you have an older image it might not work. 

[David_Brodin]

Thanks, I installed the iso of r80.20 and was able to pnp blink the appliance. My ideas are back on! 🙂

To recap for anyone else wondering, an already blinked appliance (didn't try openserver) will not blink again via pnp usb. Reverting to the installed iso ("factory default") to blink again works too. I also only needed the image tgz, and not the utility which I think is included now in the isos from r80.20.