Intel 82567LF 10/100/1000 Support

Skud · Oct 23, 2008, 3:06 AM

I have here a brand new Intel DG45FC Mini-ITX G45 based board. It has an Intel 82567LF Gigabit controller on it. From what I can see, Intel has released FreeBSD drivers for it, but they are not in 7.0 (I'm running the 1.2.1 snapshots). This means the only ethernet device that shows up is the PCI-e Intel NIC I have. The onboard 82567LF does not.

I'm "fairly" competent and I can figure things out when I have to, but for the life of me I cannot figure out what I need to do to be able to compile the driver source so I can load the new driver. I think I need a developer install so I have the kernel sources, make, etc. But - where do I get these?

Thanks!!
Riley

wallabybob · Oct 23, 2008, 11:15 AM

If you don't have experience building FreeBSD kernels you will likely find you will need to put a lot of time into this. If you are keen to get your board running pfSense as soon as possible, the most effective way to do so is probably to use the Intel PCI-E GigE controller with a VLAN capable switch which will let you use a single NIC. There have been a few quite recent and informative posts on VLANs which will probably help get you going.

If you want to try to get a driver for the on-board NIC first step will be to get hold of a pfSense developers' kit. There is a short article in the pfSense wiki which gave me enough clues to figure out how to build a kernel. I routinely build FreeBSD kernels at work and I didn't find building the pfSense kernel to be straightforward. If you don't have any experience building FreeBSD kernels you will probably find you will need a fair bit more help than you will find in the article.

Is the driver you mention a completely new driver or an enhancement to an existing driver? If the former you may be able to get away with building the driver as a kernel loadable module - use the stock standard kernel with the loadable driver. If the latter, you will almost certainly need to build a complete kernel with the new driver. In either case, you will be hoping the driver is compatible with FreeBSD 7.x sources and doesn't rely on some feature that is not yet in FreeBSD 7.x but will be in what will become FreeBSD 8.0.

If you aren't prepared to make what could turn out to be a fairly substantial investment of your time, I would recommend you look into using the VLAN option.

Skud · Oct 23, 2008, 2:02 PM

Thanks for the information..

I've built my fair share of kernels in Linux. I know Linux is NOT FreeBSD, but it's still somewhat similar. I've built drivers as loadable modules and compiled them into kernels. I just needed the information to get started with the proper build environment for PFSense..

I'll take a look at the Wiki article you mentioned.

Thanks!!
Riley

Skud · Oct 27, 2008, 10:59 PM

OK..

I have a FreeBSD 7.0 installed and I followed the directions here –> http://devwiki.pfsense.org/DevelopersBootStrapAndDevIso

I can build a pfSense and Dev ISO and they DO work.

I also have the em driver package from Intel and I can build that on the FreeBSD install from above. I can compile the module, but I want to build it into the kernel. I've placed all the source files (.c and .h) into /usr/src/sys/dev/em/ and then I re-ran cvsup_current.sh to build the pfsense ISO, but it still builds it with the OLD em driver (6.7.x I think). The driver I have and want is the 6.9.5 driver.

I've even done a find of e1000* to find all the source files it could be using and I replaced them all with the newer ones. The only think I can think of is that during cvsup_current.sh it's overwriting them with the old one.

Where should I be placing the driver sources so that they get built into the kernel? Or, what command should I be running so that I can build the kernel with the new driver and not have it overwrite the new driver with the old one?

Thanks!!
Riley

Skud · Oct 30, 2008, 6:48 PM

Anyone?

In the mean time, I went out and bought a Linksys USB200 USB NIC.. It is supported under the "axe" driver and seems to work well….

However, I want my Intel NIC!!!! ;D

Riley

Skud · Nov 5, 2008, 2:24 AM

Bump!!

The axe driver doesn't support ALTQ, so that's bad..

Anyone help with the above?

Thanks!!
Riley

dotdash · Nov 5, 2008, 4:51 PM

Back to the Intel NIC- have you tried a recent 2.0 Alpha snapshot? They use 7.1 pre-release, which had some major updtaes to the Intel driver.

Skud · Nov 5, 2008, 5:14 PM

I have been running 1.3 for the past few days, but one of the older builds built on 7.0

Is it possible to upgrade using the snapshots? I followed the links for the 1.3(2.0) snapshots, but the only updaters I see in the listing are for 1.2.1-RC2

Edit: This is the link I've been using –-> http://snapshots.pfsense.org/FreeBSD7/RELENG_1/

There used to be "pfSense-Full-Update-1.3-ALPHA-ALPHA-xxxxxxx.tgz" files in there, but not anymore..

Riley

Skud · Nov 5, 2008, 7:53 PM

Ok.. I just had to read a bit.. The naming convention has changed for 2.0 to be just the date and time.. That solves one question..

However, I don't see dedicated FULL UPDATE packages.. Maybe I'm totally missing something?

Riley

dotdash · Nov 5, 2008, 8:39 PM

I'm running it on test systems, so I just load a fresh version. It looks like there may be a naming glitch on the upgrade files. Why don't you try one of the pfSense-Full-Update-1.2.1-RC2-xxxx images? The 1.2.1 snaps should be under RELENG_1_2, so those may be 2.0-Alpha-Alpha updates…

Skud · Nov 6, 2008, 3:44 AM

It's ALIVE!!!

I just used the latest 2.0 snapshot and it appears they've added support for the NIC..

Thanks!!
Riley