Found this page that described the same problem, and a likely solution:
cpprod_util FwIsFireWallModule
The management station returned a 1, indicating that it was indeed a firewall so we unloaded the firewall policy:fw unloadlocal
got rid of the installed policy temporarily and we then changed the setting:cpprod_util FwSetFireWallModule 0
cprestart
but a reboot left us in the exact same position, with the node loading the "initial" firewall policy on boot, even though it was now reporting itself not to be a firewall enforcement node. (now, trying to perform an "fw unloadlocal" resulted in the SPAT box telling us that it could not, because it was not a firewall.Now there are ways to prevent the initial policy from loading at bootup , but I am always after a cleaner install, and less hacking of a nice fresh clean system, so we gave Checkpoint a call. The Checkpoint guy promptly advised us that the use of SmartView Monitor was not supported, and was not even supposed to work unless the node was also a firewall. Now this was news to us, as we had been running Smartview Monitor for the last 2 years on this system without skipping a beat.
It did however lead us in the right direction: We reinstalled the SPLAT server, only selected Smartcentre, configured it as a secondary management server, got the whole thing working, THEN installed Smarview Monitor after the fact (just like I now remember we did when it was built the first time!!)
Problem solved. It would appear that if you install Smartview Monitor at the initial run of cpconfig, it assumes that you want to make the node an enforcement point, but if you install it as a dedicated Smartcentre first, then install Smartview Monitor, it works.
