The Check Point upgrade guide for R80.20 is quite clear in saying that on a secondary server you should perform a clean install. All is fine and dandy with that. I don’t know if I am the first one to actually run in to a problem with it.

When using the CPUSE clean install feature in the WebUI, it seemed to work. That is after I had resized the partitions to give it enough space to perform the upgrade. It was arguing that 30GB of free space is actually 29.83GB. So, after making the current active install partition smaller all seemed well. Until the reboot that is.

After the server rebooted, I could see the new WebUI and felt excited, that it actually kept the original IP address. As CPUSE had warned that all settings will be wiped that was a nice surprise.

Unfortunately, the nice things ended there. I was unable to log in. The default “admin/admin” combo didn’t work or the previous credentials that i had. Found no hint on the Check Point support site either.

After a bit of googling around ended up just downloading the clean install ISO file and re-installing the machine. If I had used the ISO before instead of the CPUSE, I would have saved a lot of time. I guess that CPUSE clean install feature is not that clean yet.