Howto - Re-establishing communication with a firewall after losing its management keys

    This Knowledge Base article applies to:
      Amaranten Firewall 8

If you've lost your remote management keys, e.g. through a disk crash or through accidentally deleting the
firewall entry in the firewall manager, you can reestablish contact with it and retreive its current
configuration.

On the firewall:

  • Exit to the boot menu of the firewall (appliances: through the serial console). One way of doing this
    is executing the shutdown console command, and then hitting a key to abort the core reload
    process.

  • Select "Revert to Default Remote Mgmt Keys" from the "System" menu.

  • Start the firewall again.
In the firewall manager:
  • Create a new firewall. Create it as a "Custom" firewall to bypass the entire intial setup procedure.

  • Select "Action" -> "Communication" -> "Revert to Default Remote Mgmt Keys"

  • Select "Action" -> "Communication" -> "Download Configuration"

At this point, you have fully restored contact with the firewall and have the latest copy of its configuration in your database.   However, one important point remains:

In the firewall manager:

  • Select "Action" -> "Communication" -> "Change Remote Mgmt Keys" to negotiate a new set of
    management keys. Running with the default keys is not a good idea.