Migrating IP Routes from one CheckPoint SPLAT gateway to Another

At the moment, CheckPoint are busily withdrawing support for R65. This means we're doing a load of upgrade work from R65 to later versions such as R71 and R75. Quite often, the best way forward would be to perform a clean installation of the SecurePlatform (SPLAT) operating system. However, it's typical that there will be a bunch of configuration that you'd want to take with you. One of the most important of these configuration items are the routes. This article describes how to export the routes and reimport them safely onto a newly installed SPLAT box.

On the Existing Gateway
Become expert on the gateway, then run the following:

[oldgateway]# expert
Enter expert password:
You are in expert mode now.
[Expert@oldgateway]# ip route show | grep via
default via 217.xx.xx.xx dev External
...etc...

The output from this command can be directly copied/pasted away into a text file on your local workstation. It's recommended to pipe the result into a file, such as old_gw_routes.txt like this:

[Expert@oldgateway]# ip route show | grep via >> old_gw_routes.txt

I would suggest a manual check to ensure that the routes are being reported as your could expect. You can also have a tidy up by removing any old or unneeded routes. Prefix each line with "ip route add". You can do this manually, or if you saved the routes to a file, run the following awk script:

Expert@oldgateway]# cat old_gw_routes.txt |awk '{ print "ip route add "$0 ; }'
ip route add default via 217.xx.xx.xx dev External

You can then copy and paste the complete route data into a file for safe keeping before you rebuild your gateway with a fresh installation.

On the New Gateway
To recover the routes, simply become expert on the new gateway. Then paste the list of commands from your safe file:

[Expert@newgateway]# ip route add default via 217.xx.xx.xx dev External [hit return]

The routes are added to the live routing table but are not yet saved To make the routes survive a reboot execute the following:

[Expert@newgateway]# save_route --save