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    PfSense on a Riverbed Steelhead

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Hardware
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    • S
      sambiggs
      last edited by

      OK, cleared those and ran commands manually.
      No apparent error messages

      Enter an option: 8
      
      [2.3.5-RELEASE][root@pfSense.localdomain]/root: kldload ichsmb
      ichsmb0: <Intel 631xESB/6321ESB (ESB2) SMBus controller> port 0x540-0x55f irq 19 at device 31.3 on pci0
      smbus0: <System Management Bus> on ichsmb0
      [2.3.5-RELEASE][root@pfSense.localdomain]/root: kldload smb
      smb0: <SMBus generic I/O> on smbus0
      [2.3.5-RELEASE][root@pfSense.localdomain]/root: smbmsg -s 0x48 -c 0x55 -o 6 0x03 0xfc 0x01 0xfe 0x66 0x99
      [2.3.5-RELEASE][root@pfSense.localdomain]/root: smbmsg -s 0x48 -c 0x55 -o 6 0x03 0xfc 0x00 0xff 0x66 0x99
      [2.3.5-RELEASE][root@pfSense.localdomain]/root:
      

      HOWEVER
      After testing a little more thoroughly, the ports are not arranged as I had assumed (Yes, I know, "ass out of U & ME") but are em2 em3 em0 em1 em4 em5. When I tested previously, I may have been looking for connection on a port that was disabled

      They are all working
      ...but it may be that they were working before. I cannot be sure because of my poor testing.

      Thanks for assistance, and for taking the trouble to share your efforts

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      • O
        Okijames
        last edited by

        Does anyone have a BIOS for CX570 or CX770 that's more recent than 02/14/2014? Screenshot below. I am trying to add an Samsung 970 Pro NVME drive, but it's not working, I'm thinking the BIOS is too old.

        0eb649a3-f4c7-49d8-ad7a-dfb2378220f6-image.png

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        • C
          cjohnson
          last edited by cjohnson

          I just looked at my both of my CX-770's, one i've modded slightly (added RAM/changed HDD's etc.), the other is totally stock) and they both have dates that're the same as yours.

          not sure if you've thought of this but, as possible workaround of the BIOS limitations, you might do a hybrid boot sort of thing. something like maybe put all of the minimum boot stuff on a small SATA SSD to satisfy what BIOS needs, then a kernel can take over interrogating the PCIe bus and getting the rest of what it needs from your NVMe.... maybe?

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          • stephenw10S
            stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
            last edited by stephenw10

            @okijames said in PfSense on a Riverbed Steelhead:

            Samsung 970 Pro NVME

            Exactly what sort of drive is that? How are you connecting it? m.2? PCIe card? An adapter of some sort?

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            • O
              Okijames @stephenw10
              last edited by Okijames

              @stephenw10 @cjohnson M.2 NVME, I have a in a PCIE extension cable thingie. PCIE edgecard -> short cable -> M.2 socket. It "works" in that the NVME drive is recognized by ESXi, as a PCI device, but not as a storage adapter. ESXI can pass it through to a VM, but I can't use it as local shared storage for the hypervisor.

              https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07TKYMQXZ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

              PS, it is a 1TB NVME so a bit much to pass through just for pfSense :)

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              • M
                mjamesPFS
                last edited by

                @freska99

                I was wondering if you ever got this running on your 1050?

                I trying to to the same and tying to understand the steps you took.

                I was able to use a USB thumb drive and install PfSense 2.5.1 on a an internal HD but none of my interfaces work including em4 and em5 which should be the Primary and Aux interfaces.

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                • stephenw10S
                  stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                  last edited by

                  Like not detected or not passing traffic?

                  The non-bypassed ports should show link at least.

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                  • M
                    mjamesPFS
                    last edited by

                    @stephenw10,

                    Thank you for the quick reply. Sorry it has taken me so long to get back to you. I finally had some time yesterday to take another look. Turns out I had a bad vLAN setting on my lab switch. I now have access to PFSense from the web interface and SSH. I still need to figure out how access the other network interfaces but for now I have the primary and aux interfaces working.

                    B/R.
                    Mike

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                    • F
                      foureight84 @Okijames
                      last edited by foureight84

                      @okijames Did you ever find newer bios for this board? I've been having issues using newer SATA SSDs due to the old bios. Most of them do not detect the correct capacity (1GB instead of 128GB for example).

                      I don't have access to the Riverbed support page for this product since it requires an active license.

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                      • O
                        Okijames @foureight84
                        last edited by

                        @foureight84 I asked my contacts still working at Riverbed, and they confirmed there is no newer bios. FWIW I don't use SSDs because of a number of the packages I use write to the disk pretty heavily. In my case at least, the SSD would wear too quickly so I opted for HDD instead. Because of this I've not encountered the issue you're seeing.

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                        • F
                          foureight84 @Okijames
                          last edited by

                          @okijames Thanks for the reply and confirmation! For now I've been using MLC SSDs (new old stocks that I can find) in ZFS mirror. That should last a long time. I'm not using doing any packet captures, just mostly default logs which is minimal. I was just hoping to be able to use larger drives later on in case I want to turn it into a Proxmox box instead.

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                          • O
                            Okijames @foureight84
                            last edited by Okijames

                            @foureight84 FWIW Proxmox is even worse when it comes to wearing out SSDs. :)

                            That and for whatever reason the 770 (with a Xeon E3-1125C v2 CPU so 4cores at 2.5Ghz) is almost embarrassingly slow at running VMs under Proxmox. I have one stacked with 32GB RAM, running Proxmox, and really disappointed in VM performance. It is so bad, I think something must be misconfigured, but can't find anything glaring.

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                            • F
                              foureight84 @Okijames
                              last edited by

                              @okijames haha I thought it would be. It's a pretty old CPU at this point.

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                              • O
                                Okijames @foureight84
                                last edited by

                                @foureight84 Yup, on the plus side it is a solid/reliable machine. So I use it for a few lightweight things that need to run 24/7 without a hiccup.

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                                • stephenw10S
                                  stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                  last edited by

                                  Hmm, it's not that old. Just how terrible is the performance?

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                                  • O
                                    Okijames @stephenw10
                                    last edited by Okijames

                                    @stephenw10 Reminds me of 486 performance. Then again I'm basing that on my experience with a Windows VM. So maybe the lack of any sort of video card in the system is the real culprit?

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                                    • stephenw10S
                                      stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                      last edited by

                                      Could be. Current Windows versions seem to have pretty significant hardware requirements.

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                                      • P
                                        pantigon
                                        last edited by

                                        Please help me.....

                                        root: smbmsg -p
                                        Probing for devices on /dev/smb0:
                                        Device @0x10: w
                                        Device @0x32: rw
                                        Device @0x46: rw
                                        Device @0x4c: rw
                                        Device @0x5a: w
                                        Device @0x5c: rw
                                        Device @0x62: rw
                                        Device @0x7c: rw
                                        Device @0x88: rw
                                        Device @0xa2: rw
                                        Device @0xac: rw
                                        Device @0xd2: rw
                                        Device @0xd8: rw
                                        

                                        What is "smbmsg" code?
                                        Thanks.

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                                        • stephenw10S
                                          stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                          last edited by

                                          What hardware is that?

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                                          • P
                                            pantigon
                                            last edited by

                                            @stephenw10
                                            This is Riverbed CXA-255.
                                            alt text

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