I haven't seen many intels that aren't supported in Freebsd 8.1 other than some of the ultra new onboard chipsets (like the 82579). Personally I'd still rather buy a box with an integrated intel that isn't currently supported than an integrated anything else that is currently supported, except perhaps for broadcom. Broadcom does make some nicer chipsets, although they also make some lower end stuff.

@Ecnerwal:

Not directly comparable - not even the same family - but…

My SATA-only motherboard was happy with 2.1, 2.0.2 was not happy with it.

I was less happy with 2.1, or perhaps I was doing something I have yet to figure out wrong with 2.1 - in any case, the box kept stopping traffic for no obvious reason, so I decided I really needed to try make it work with a release version.

Based on help from here, I looked in the BIOS and found a setting to put the SATA disks into IDE emulation mode, and 2.0.2 was happy to install, and has run happily since.

Yeah I thought about going 2.1, but this is a production environment and I don't want to risk it.

The IDE only mode as another thought, but that tends to be slower (and the thing has a 150GB raptor that is going in it).

@stephenw10:

You haven't actually specified what the problem is here, or even that there is a problem. Just because you think it might not work doesn't mean it won't.  ;)

Steve

This is true. My main problem is I made a fatal mistake, one that one should never do when dealing with a non windows based OS (especially BSD IMO). I didn't check the approved hardware list. I cannot confirm there is a problem or not without opening the hardware I just bought and playing with it, and I don't need it if I can't use it for it's intended purpose. If there is a problem, I pay a 15 percent restocking fee.

The problem I see is that there are no confirmed drivers for the A55/A75/A85 chipsets in Freebsd8.1-release-p13. I see the SB600 southbridge from the 8x and 9x series AM3+ chipsets listed on the audio side of things (which I'm sure means that the disk controller also works, as FWIW, the intel ICH10 isn't listed in disk controllers but in the audio section, and I've read of people using Z77 etc boards with PF). The APU chipsets are somewhat radically different from the AM3+ stuff though so I wouldn't trust that just because the AM3+ stuff works the FM1/FM2 stuff will.

The "oldest" version of FreeBSD I can find any documentation at all on regarding the A75/A85 chipsets is 9.0, and is in this post at the freebsd forums. For the record, I'd be perfectly fine with only the AMD supplied SATA ports working (the poster in that post was frustrated his/her Asmedia SATA controller wasn't supported). I do need them to work though, and I can't guarantee that on 8.1 as there is nothing mentioned about it.

I wanted the APU because power wise they do quite well against the i3's (actually a watt or two lower at idle), except under full load, and with the system configured to use a com port, the GPU is never going to rev up either. Additionally, the AMD APU's have AES instructions at a much nicer price point. You have to go with an i5 on the intel side to get that feature.

Ultimately, rather than risk having to return something that doesn't work, I just called and got the order cancelled (I do pay return shipping but no restocking fee if I don't open any thing) and bought a Z77 motherboard and an i5. I guess an added plus is 4 floating point units instead of 2 (same 4 integer units though), and more IPC. I just didn't want to spend that and also really wanted to support the underdog for producing such an affordale and capable chip. I do get PCIE 3.0 out of this, as well as an extra PCIE 2.0x16 slot (admittedly running at x1) vs the board I'd originally picked.

I suppose the other side benefit is the AMD AES instructions aren't identical to the Intel ones, and I don't know whether they are planned to be rolled into PF any time soon (I have read that the Intel ones will be there at some point). This machine will be pushed moderately hard as well as I've got a 50 megabit pipe, 5 Vlans, lots of ACLS, and I need to route between vlans for a pair of boxes that both have twin Intel Gigabit Server nics in LACP.

So, while I love being a guinea pig, I don't when it means I might pay a restocking fee. Yes, I paid more money up front now, but not that much more if I ended up neding to pay a restocking fee. Although then again it was a bit more yet as just in case this box gets repurposed later I went for a 3570K instead of a base model I5 (I mean shoot, the extra 40 bucks is worth it, I can take this one to a nice even 4ghz or more on stock volts most likely).

See http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Tuning_and_Troubleshooting_Network_Cards for some suggestions that might help?

Which pfSense build are you using?

Yes. I have tried that old netgear card in mine also and it really never worked or would work intermittently.

I am planning to do some experimenting with Turion64 ML/MT and socket754 desktop motherboards..
with bios properly recognizing the cpu, working 64bit system could cost next to nothing (since both the cpu and mobo are old tech, 5-10€ each around here I don't even care if some hardware dies during the testing)

also, on desktop motherboards there are  more than 1-2 PCI/PCIe slots to play with.. Turions have 24/35W max.TDP, when idle they draw very little..add MMX, 3DNow!, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, x86_64, NX, PowerNow!, Deeper Sleep and they seem to be pretty nice option..

Gonna see the results by beginning of March.. ML28 and MT32 ordered, also 2 different Asrock motherboards.. :D

once more thx for the help there.

the cpu i use now was low down on that list.
so think for me i3 or i5 seems the best way for me.
time to find a good mainboard then i'll start with my Intel G840 that i have in my windows,
when i get my 3770k.

hm just saw that my win mainboard has Intel(R) 82579V asus p8z68-v gen3.

well well.

thanks for help and some input.

/Mattias

@macmonac:

can we boot on usb ?

I did a build with the 2.1 beta on this motherboard, and had no problem booting from USB and the CF card with a 2GB card and the appropriate image.

I though that may be the case. Thanks for the help  :)

Some more of my experiences with this hardware.

2.1 seems to run fine.  No real problems discovered yet in our usage.  A co-worker figured out how to get the rear serial port working as the default console (basically swapping COM1 and COM2), which makes this board a lot more useful for us.

Disable acpi for physical console ports: echo 'debug.acpi.avoid="\_SB_.PCI0.SBRG.UAR1 \_SB_.PCI0.SBRG.UAR2"' > /boot/loader.conf.local Swap the hardware addresses for uart.0 and uart.1 in /boot/device.hints.
The original entries for uart in /boot/devices.hints will look like this: hint.uart.0.at="isa" hint.uart.0.port="0x3F8" hint.uart.0.flags="0x10" hint.uart.0.irq="4" hint.uart.1.at="isa" hint.uart.1.port="0x2F8" hint.uart.1.irq="3"

Modify them so that they look like this:

hint.uart.0.at="isa" hint.uart.0.port="0x2F8" hint.uart.0.flags="0x10" hint.uart.0.irq="3" hint.uart.1.at="isa" hint.uart.1.port="0x3F8" hint.uart.1.irq="4"

Does the computer link to the switch OK?

Have you tried forcing the duplex/speed.  If the two can't come to a consensus, then they will shut the link down.

http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Comparison_to_Commercial_Alternatives

I generally build to order for my customers when needed. If your looking for a turnkey solution your choices may be limited depending on where you live/work.

Id imagine that any reputable computer shop in your area should be able to build what you need. Where do you buy your desktops or laptops?

Just some thoughts.  :)

Thanks for reminding me I still need to test out SNORT on the ALIX I have.

Thank you for the help  :)

Remount the file system as RW first.  ;)

http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Remount_embedded_filesystem_as_read-write

Steve

You are correct, the "none" means that no driver attached.

We include all supported drivers already. If it doesn't show up even on 2.1, you may have to wait for 2.2.

Of course the argument can go all day long, but my 128GB SSD example was the extreme case for very heavily hit squid caches.  Obviously, a smaller cache and/or one with less heavy read/write cycles would be even less expensive, which probably covers most pfSense installs.

By price I went by whatever new hard drives were cheapest on Newegg, I think the cheapest was a 250GB drive, but 500's were cheap too.

Obviously, you'll make choices that work for you, my main point was that modern SSD's aren't inherently failure prone for pfSense.

@wallabybob:

ssh to the pfSense box, login as admin, select option 8 (shell command) paste the command into the ssh window and copy and paste the command and its output into a reply to this topic OR see http://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Executing_command_line_commands_using_the_web_interface

Oh yeah, forgot about SSH. Will do!

Damn it, Steve, you're making me look bad… :D   Corrected again. Hahaha.  Doing good.  They were all purchased for Firebox builds, yes, but I ended up using a 2.0ghz chip.

@cmb, tester_02 : thanks for your feedback, it is appreciated.

So i conclude that the reliability stays the same almost, but flexibility to upgrade and or try other/new features goes up.

thanks

@coyote:

I wanted to try out an alix 2d13 board and an older wlan adapter siemens gigaset usb adapter 54. I was happy that I found this wlan adapter on the combatibility list from freebsd 8.1.

Unfortunately a number of makers of network change chipsets in their devices without changing the model number. Consequently a support statement might be true of only SOME devices with the same model number.

@coyote:

The wlan adapter is recognized but it's not shown in pfsense. Any idea?

The device has been captured by the "generic USB" driver - there is no specific driver in pfSense for it. It has been recognised as a USB device but not as a wireless networking device. Get yourself a dongle with Ralink RT3070 chipset. The pfSense wireless forum contains a number of reports of successful use of that device and, in some cases, pointers to sellers. Save your current dongle for attempted use with Windows or Linux - you are more likely to be able to find drivers for those operating systems.

OR use an external AP. For my modest WiFi requirements I prefer to have a pfSense based AP since it has better trouble shooting and reporting facilities than I have found in the few cheap external APs I have used.