Merlin board mode?

[Bittereinder]

Hello, everybody,

I have come across a Palo Alto firewall that cannot normally boot up and remains in "Merlin board mode". I cannot find much information on the internet regarding this. Can someone clarify what this "Merlin board mode" is? And what is its cause?

Thanks a lot!

[BPry · Accepted solution]

@Bittereinder 

Merlin mode is the board bootloader; you'll notice that you'll see MERLIN board revisons mentioned. 

The only thing that I've ever seen get a device to boot properly out of Merlin mode is the instructions I think I posted to an earlier post of yours yesterday.

If that isn't working for you the board likely has some failed component on it and is officially dead. Support ussually won't even troubleshoot something like this and just RMA the device. 

[Bittereinder]

Thanks, BPry, for your answer.

Those instructions you posted yesterday were a reply to Werewindle, not me. I found the message you were refering to anyway. I only don't understand very well what "cpld_reg write 7 1" and "cpld_reg write 8 0" are supposed to do.

By the way, in Palo Alto documentation I couldn't find a single word about Merlin mode, nothing, nix. Where should I refer to deepen my knowledge in this topic?

Thanks!

[BPry]

@Bittereinder 

You won't really hear anything about Merlin mode, as you aren't really ever meant to see it. You'll notice some bits and pieces mentioned in knowledgebase articles, but outside of that it really isn't documented at all.