TX401 Support?

Psychlone

Hi everyone, first time poster.
I have just recently learned about pfsense and am absolutely struggling with trying to get a TP-Link TX401 10Gbit PCI-e card working with pfsense.

I have never used FreeBSD in my life, and only used Linux a few times ever, so really what I need is for someone to point me in the proper direction on what to read so that I can install the driver package for this TX401 card. I'm not looking to be spoon-fed, I love learning new things, but I really do need some guidance here on how this might work.

Tons of experience in Windows and definitely not afraid of command prompt, but I have zero idea what the commands are and I'm just running around bumping into myself at this point.

Thank you in advance for any information you can pass along.

stephenw10

We need to know what chipset that card it built on. Almost all available drivers are in kernel an included in pfSense anyway but I'm assuming you have tried it and it isn't shown?
If it's in a system running pfSense already so to the command line and run:

pciconf -lv

That will show you all the PCI(e) devices in the system including that card. We will be able to see the PCI device and vendor ID and use it determine if a driver is available.

Steve

stephenw10

Ah, I see it's an Aquatia card, looks like AQC107.

That driver is not included, it's very new in FreeBSD. There is now a package for it you can install though.
See: https://forum.netgate.com/topic/155264/can-t-assign-nic-aquantia-corp-aqc107

Steve

provels

@psychlone said in TX401 Support?:

TX401

There's this:
https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/tplink-tx401-not-recognized.81478/
and I don't see it on the 12.0 supported hardware.
¯\(ツ)/¯

stephenw10

Right, but there is a driver and it has now been packaged: https://www.freshports.org/net/aquantia-atlantic-kmod/

Psychlone

@stephenw10 said in TX401 Support?:

https://forum.netgate.com/topic/155264/can-t-assign-nic-aquantia-corp-aqc107

Thanks for the replies, they're MUCH appreciated.

I had followed Roy360's post about this same NIC and got completely lost between bad links for drivers that don't exist and posts on how to get it running and seeing someone come up with a kernel panic, so that's why I made my own thread instead of reviving his. It simply got too convoluted for me to follow because I literally know nothing about FreeBSD.

I see in the freshports link that @stephenw10 posted, that there are very clear and detailed instructions, but I'm missing step 1. I literally don't know how to get to where I would type make generate-plist

Also, after reading Roy360's thread a dozen times, I think I need to run the package and not the full installer, right?

Soo... speaking with a first-grader in FreeBSD here, please explain where I bring up the command so that I can type make generate-plist and follow the rest of the instructions?

Thanks again, I really do appreciate the guidance.

stephenw10

There are no build tools in pfSense, you can't 'make' anything on it directly.

This is what I would do:

[2.5.2-RELEASE][admin@252dev.stevew.lan]/root: pkg add http://pkg.freebsd.org/FreeBSD:12:amd64/latest/All/aquantia-atlantic-kmod-0.0.5_1.txz
Fetching aquantia-atlantic-kmod-0.0.5_1.txz: 100%   22 KiB  22.7kB/s    00:01    
Installing aquantia-atlantic-kmod-0.0.5_1...
Extracting aquantia-atlantic-kmod-0.0.5_1: 100%
[2.5.2-RELEASE][admin@252dev.stevew.lan]/root: kldload if_atlantic
[2.5.2-RELEASE][admin@252dev.stevew.lan]/root: kldstat
Id Refs Address                Size Name
 1   15 0xffffffff80200000  3aea720 kernel
 2    1 0xffffffff83f19000     1000 cpuctl.ko
 3    1 0xffffffff83f1a000     2698 intpm.ko
 4    1 0xffffffff83f1d000      b40 smbus.ko
 5    1 0xffffffff83f1e000    344d8 if_wg.ko
 6    1 0xffffffff83f53000     9fc0 if_atlantic.ko

That is what kernel panicked that other users system though he may have used quarterly not latest. But it is only loaded temporarily there so you can just reboot.

Steve

Psychlone

Thank you @stephenw10, t helped a lot, but I still can't get the NIC to work.
I typed exactly as instructed and got the same exact ref address you show for if_atlantic.ko

After installing the package and verifying by looking at your code above, I typed exit, then went to 1 to assign interfaces and the TP-Link TX410 does not ever begin blinking.
I've set and reset the interfaces enough times that I know you have to unplug the ethernet cable, hit "a" for auto, then plug it in and wait for uplink. It never uplinks.

I know this NIC works because I just now tested it in a windows machine.

Any other ideas? Is there a type of catlog or logfile that might output something that I can use to figure this out?

Thank you for all your help.

EDIT:
This is that I see when I type kldstat

Id Refs Address                Size Name
 1   17 0xffffffff80200000    3aea720 kernel
 2    2 0xfffffffff83ceb000   a448 opensolaris.ko
 3    1 0xfffffffff83cf6000   3bb7f0 zfs.ko
 4    1 0xfffffffff84321000   1000 cpuctl.ko
 5    1 0xffffffff84322000    9fc0 if_atlantic.ko

EDIT 2:
I haven't mentioned that I have an Intel 0H092P Dell PRO/1000 VT QUAD PORT Gigabit PCI-Express Network Adapter Card in the first PCI-e x16 slot and the TX410 is in the only other PCI-e x16 slot. This is a small Dell D03S desktop that I'm using.
FWIW, pfsense works well with the 0H092P NIC, I have questions about that but I'll open a new thread for those later down the road. Is there some known compatibility issue between these 2 NIC's?

stephenw10

When you load the kernel module I expect the driver to attach to the NIC (or fail to). You should see that in the system log or if you run dmesg.
If it does attach it should be available to assign.
I would not expect it to show LINK until it's assigned and enabled though. Or if you manually 'ifconfig up' it.

Steve

Psychlone

@stephenw10
OK, what I see when I run dmesg is:

atlantic: FLB>F/W successfully loaded from flash
atlantic: MAC F/W version is 3.1.100
atlantic: FLB> F/W successfully loaded from flash

EDIT (I just erased most of a whole post)
I think I figured it out.

During Inferface Assignment, I noticed that when it asks to enter the interface name (igb0 igb1 igb2 iggb3 em0 (which is the onboard LAN) and now it has aq0. I had been pressing "a" to auto-assign but this last time I manually assigned aq0 to LAN and it showed on the screen

aq0: atlantic: link UP: speed=100
aq0: atlantic: TSO disabled for link speed < 1G

...So now am I to assume that the TX401 is only at 100mbps instead of 10G? Why, and what do I need to do to use this card to it's potential?

stephenw10

Ah, yeah the fact aq0 exists is good.

It may not support the auto-link detection for assigning, not all NICs do.

Try running: ifconfig -vvvm aq0

That will show you what speed it's linked at and what it's reporting it's capable of.

Steve