WatchGuard T40 firebox - firmware upgrade after expiration

[joecool]

hi,

Possible to upgrade FW with expired feature key?
Current OS is 12.6.1 - would want to upgrade to 12.10.4
The obvious methods: WebUI and WatchGuard System Manager both fail and complain it has expired feature license.
I read brief post about CLI (telnet / SSH ) to do it, but I have no luck connecting via SSH.

Seems that feature is locked and DISABLED in Access Portal listed in Feature key summary.
OR am I missing something?

 

[Solaris17]

I havent used watchguard in a bit, but it might be true you can do it via SSH or tftp and only the GUI method is locked behind a lic. No real way to know unless you actually manage to get either working and receive an error of some sort. If you arent deadset on there OS Im pretty sure you can still convert even current units to opnsense or pfsense since they use standard x86 HW.

 

[joecool]

UPDATE:

Was actually able to update to 12.10 - via WSM - did incremental OS version as I read the last that did not need feature key was 12.7.2 - but was able to move all the way to 12.10 before it got shut down because of key.
Not sure if incremental approach made a difference, still not latests but better. Perhaps this helps someone in the future.

think the SSH is really DISABLED by expired key, so no way to do SSH update route...