low price for nic compatibility with pfsense

coco95

hi all

i'm searching for a low price NIC for my pfsense.

i have two cards qlogic qle8152 and it's impossible to make the status go up on the interface switch when trying to turn it on.

yet I looked at the freebsd page on the qlxge driver.
I added the line if_qlxge_load="YES"
in the file /boot/conf.loader

The cards are visible in pfsense
but it doesn't work

did I forget something?
or do you have a low cost card to advise me?

I thank you in advance for your help

coco95

and sorry if my question sounds trivial.
it's for my student project.

viragomann

@coco95 said in low price for nic compatibility with pfsense:

I added the line if_qlxge_load="YES"
in the file /boot/conf.loader

You probably mean /boot/loader.conf. Anyway, this file is not persistent. It gets overwritten on next system boot up. Hence your additional settings will never be loaded.

Put the custom settings into /boot/loader.conf.local
Create the file if it doesn't exist already.

stephenw10

It can be overwritten if you make a change in the config that affects it or at upgrade which is why you should use the .local file. It doesn't actually get overwritten at every boot though.
Which is why a lot of people edit it and think everything is fine until it isn't.

Steve

coco95

thank you very much for your help and explanation @viragomann and @stephenw10 .

I made the change.
But I still get the error message in the CLI .
Example when I change the IP address.
I have this error that appears 10 times.

ql0: qls_mbx_set_mgmt_ctrl failed [0x00004001]
ql0: qls_hw_reset: failed

and I still haven't found the resolution to this problem with my friend G...

stephenw10

I assume the NICs are detected at boot though and appears as ql0 and ql1?

The logs in your other thread appear to show ql10 and ql11 which would be strange.

How do those NICs appear if you run: pciconf -lv ?

Any errors in the boot logs when they are first brought up?

Steve

coco95

Thanks again Steve for your help.

Yes the cards appear at startup

Yes, it's me who made a mistake (I work a little late and then I write nonsense)

I guess I'm only giving you the lines concerning Qlogic

Here is the result pciconf -lv concerning Qlogic

none4@pci0:1:0:0:       class=0x020000 card=0x017e1077 chip=0x80001077 rev=0x02                        hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'QLogic Corp.'
    device     = '10GbE Converged Network Adapter (TCP/IP Networking)'
    class      = network
    subclass   = ethernet
none5@pci0:1:0:1:       class=0x020000 card=0x017e1077 chip=0x80001077 rev=0x02                        hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'QLogic Corp.'
    device     = '10GbE Converged Network Adapter (TCP/IP Networking)'
    class      = network
    subclass   = ethernet
none6@pci0:1:0:2:       class=0x0c0400 card=0x017d1077 chip=0x80011077 rev=0x02                        hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'QLogic Corp.'
    device     = '10GbE Converged Network Adapter (FCoE)'
    class      = serial bus
    subclass   = Fibre Channel
none7@pci0:1:0:3:       class=0x0c0400 card=0x017d1077 chip=0x80011077 rev=0x02                        hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'QLogic Corp.'
    device     = '10GbE Converged Network Adapter (FCoE)'
    class      = serial bus
    subclass   = Fibre Channel
none8@pci0:3:0:0:       class=0x0c0400 card=0x00000000 chip=0x80011077 rev=0x02                        hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'QLogic Corp.'
    device     = '10GbE Converged Network Adapter (FCoE)'
    class      = serial bus
    subclass   = Fibre Channel

and this evening I have a new error before the boot log pfsense:
warning! adapter nvram contains invalid data
error! initialize firmware error

I think I have seen a page that deals with an nvram problem on another qlogic model.

But today is my last chance to exchange the cards for others and I think I will choose this solution.

Would you have 10giga cards (not intel) to advise me?

stephenw10

There are no ql devices shown there. Devices shown as 'none' do not have a driver attached.

Was that only this boot? The previous logs show the ql devices present.

It's hard to recommend anything except Intel NICs. Chelsio NICs are also well supported but generally more expensive.
Something x520 based is not expensive if you buy it used. There are manu OEM branded devices that work fine. See: https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/list-of-nics-and-their-equivalent-oem-parts.20974/
I have an HP NC560SFP+ which I use for testing. It's Intel x520 based.

Steve

coco95

Hi Steve,

Thank you for your time.
I'm sorry it took me a while to respond.

I looked at the link you gave me, it's very interesting.
And I hadn't thought about cards with Intel controllers.
I proposed this solution which was accepted.

For the qlogic card I think I killed it.
I got the drivers, firmware, etc. from their site
but at the same time to write you here.
I was trying to make it work on windows.
Then by launching the firmware update in windows 64bits compatibility error and then corruption of the nvram.
I did an installation of the windows version for which the drivers were built (windows server 2008 r2) same result.
and since then it's a blank on pfsense.

I would have had the time, I would have liked to try to debug the qlogic card with linux.
but the internship limits my time.

arctic_maks

I successfully configured the QLogic QLE8152. The issue with "if_qlxge_load="YES"" not working stems from the absence of the if_qlxge.ko module in the pfSense release. My initial solution was to install FreeBSD 14.0 and manually copy the module to boot/kernel. However, this approach failed due to a version mismatch error when attempting to load it with "kldload."

To resolve this, I took the following steps on a fresh installation of FreeBSD 14.0:
Cloned the FreeBSD source repository from the pfSense GitHub:

cd /usr
git clone git@github.com:pfsense/FreeBSD-src.git
cd FreeBSD-src

Switched the branch from master to the version I'm using, in this case, RELENG_2_7_2

git checkout RELENG_2_7_2
Added the qlxge module to the GENERIC configuration file as per the documentation (https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=qlxge&sektion=4&format=html):

device qlxge

Executed the following commands:

make buildkernel

After the kernel was built, use make installkernel to copy the new kernel and modules to boot/kernel.

Copied if_qlxge.ko to pfSense and added "if_qlxge_load="YES"" to /boot/conf/loader.conf.

Rebooted the system.

For your convenience, I've attached the module for the 2.7.2 version: if_qlxge.zip.
if_qlxge.zip