Chelsio PCI Passthrough - NICs not assignable

johnoatwork

Hi All,

Came across this thread from 2017 and have the exact same problem with CE-2.5.2 using T520-CR cards under Proxmox 7.1. In summary, the Chelsio cards are passed though to the pfSense VM but not assignable as NICs.

https://forum.netgate.com/topic/111776/vmware-pci-passthrough-chelsio-t420?_=1639364973804

Test results:

$ pciconf -lv # shows the Chelsio card as present
$ kldstat -v | grep cx # Shows the driver is loaded in the kernel
$ dmesg | grep cx # Empty
$ dmesg | grep t5 # Empty

Appears to be a Chelsio / pfSense issue:

Intel 520 works out of the box
FreeBSD 12.2 VM with the exact same config works with both the Intel and Cheliso cards

I'm out of ideas and would really appreciate any advice on what might be the cause.

Thanks

johnoatwork

Well, I reckon its a firmware version issue.

When Proxmox boots up, it installs t5fw-1.26.2.0.bin
If I pass the whole card through to pfSense, it installs t5fw-1.25.0.40.bin and the interfaces are available for assignment as expected
If I just pass a VF through with fw 1.26.2.0, pfSense ignores the card and doesn't load the driver, even though it is present as a PCI device in the VM

Its a bit of a catch 22. I can install 1.25.0.40 by passing the whole card through to pfSense, but after that the host can't see the card until it is rebooted and then it updates to 1.26.2.0.

I haven't been able to figure out how to prevent Proxmox from updating the firmware. I used ethtool to downgrade the firmware on the host but the pfSense VM no longer boots with VFs attached.

Days and days on this :(