Installation on Intel D2500CC (atom with dual NIC board)
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FYI below is my experience regarding intel's DC2500CC (dual NIC board)
initially tried pfsense 2.01 64 bit - no matter what i do, it does not install (more details later). then tried 32 bit, after some minor tweaks, finally had it installed.
64 bit:
initially tried to use USB DVD drive, it ran into several problems, then tried an internal DVD drive, it passes problems but still suffers a graphic issue - the screen does not refresh, only the very last line of text is over writting part of last line (not sure how to describe this). tried safe mode and other modes, no luck and cannot really see what it is doing because of the graphic/text issue.i could have tried with an PCI-E graphic card i guess, but instead decided to give 32 bit a try.
32 bit:
screen refreshes ok. however once at the blue screen where to set the installation options, graphic / text becomes strange again. by remembering first option at the installation options is to change video setting, i changed a few diff fonts and one seens to at least allow me to see half of the text. eventually had 32 bit installed.i guess the above means there is some compatibility issue with the new atom's built-in graphic? BTW i've also had installation on intel's D525MW, bith 32 and 64 version installed perfectly.
am i the only one seeing this problem? anyway i am going to stick with 32 bit for now until / if there is a solution to it.
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for those who, like me, wanting to use the latest fanless atom board in a small case without a case fan - so far it doesn't seen to be a good idea. i am using aopen's S100, this is a aluminium case and the whole case is pretty hot. room temperature is 24C.
just before installing pfsense, i had win7 OS running multiple 7z compression jamming CPU at 100% for more than 30 min. hwmonitor showing system 50C, CPU 45.5C. now about one hour after pfsense installation (it is totally idling at the moment), it feels hotter than when running multiple 7z compression.
ordering 80mm x 80 mm x 10mm case fan…
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64 bit:
the screen does not refresh, only the very last line of text is over writting part of last line (not sure how to describe this). tried safe mode and other modes, no luck and cannot really see what it is doing because of the graphic/text issue.Same with me. I tried to use 64bit embeded nanobsd version on compact flash with SATA adapter. My idea was that the problem it is related to the SATA adapter because additional I got disc reading errors. I tried both AHCI and IDE mode. But seems to be a general issue.
Tomorrow I will try 32 bit version.
BTW. Before updating the BIOS to Version 30 from Dec. 2011 I got more errors.
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Ah… Just ordered this motherboard for a pfSense build. Very useful to know. Hopefully we can find a way to get this sorted...
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Tomorrow I will try 32 bit version.
With i386 version of pfsense 2.0.1 nanobsd I do not get graphic error any more. Disc reading error stays. But now I can read the error message.
ad4: failure read DMA timeout LBA = 15625215
ad4: timeout read DMA retrying
…But after long time system is booting up and is running. When I try to save settings the same error message will pop up again.
Semms to be a conflict with CF to SATA adapter or an issue with SATA itself.
Tomorrow I will try to boot from USB.
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very interestingly, under 64 bit, one other errors that i can make out was disk error reading the optical disk. i tried two different external USB optic drives, same error. i then stripped one of the external drive and connect that very drive via onboard SATA and whala the reading error is gone. in my case i would say it has something to do with USB rather than SATA. however under D525MW i used same USB drive and had no error installing 64 bit.
i did not try external USB optic drive under 32 bit though.
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With i386 version of pfsense 2.0.1 nanobsd I do not get graphic error any more. Disc reading error stays. But now I can read the error message.
ad4: failure read DMA timeout LBA = 15625215
ad4: timeout read DMA retryingSo, issue seems to be solved.
After disabling S.M.A.R.T. in Bios, reading error is gone.
So far 32bit nanobsd Version semms to be is working fine with compact flash card installed in CF to SATA adapter.But still I'm missing 64 bit support to be able to use 4 Gb RAM.
Hopefully pfsense 2.1 is comming soon will have better suport for D2500cc board. -
Where did you guys find this board?
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Got mine from minipc.de in Germany (delivery costs to the UK weren't too bad). Logic Supply EU store suggest they will have it in stock from 1st March.
Boot from the live CD (some odd video corruption - some characters appear as blocks rather than the character typed when you enter WAN and LAN set-up information etc.), struggling to get an embedded image to boot properly from a USB flash drive (Geometry errors)
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Does the reading of the thermal sensors work with this board?
//Jani
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Not sure - still struggling to get embedded install to boot from USB flash drive. Keep getting GEOM warnings and boot stopping - which I think are to do with the way the image is being written to the flash drive (have tried physdiskwrite in Windows and dd in OS X on a Mac).
Booted once OK from a USB drive with 4GB embedded VGA i386 image but got fsck -y warnings - so re-flashed and now can't get it to fully boot at all.
Booting from USB CD drive fine - but I want an embedded install. May go down the SATA CF card route instead…
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Where did you guys find this board?
I bought it here
http://www.cartft.com/catalog/gl/78Together with the M350 mini ITX case and the picoPSU power supply a small combination for a firewall/router.
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What happens if you try with a sata HD ?
Can you try to output the console to the serial port(s) instead?(sry for the q;s i have been looking for this board myself, very interested in how it behaves :))
//Jani
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What happens if you try with a sata HD ?
Can you try to output the console to the serial port(s) instead?(sry for the q;s i have been looking for this board myself, very interested in how it behaves :))
//Jani
Don't have a spare SATA HD or a Serial capture option at the moment - as my D2500CC set-up is not being built at home but at a second location. Hope to be able to do both things soon, but at the moment I only have a USB DVD-R drive, a DVI monitor, some USB sticks and a couple of laptops to work with…
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Booting from USB CD drive fine - but I want an embedded install. May go down the SATA CF card route instead…
So far my system is running well on D2500cc, but i386 version only. I tested two installations so far:
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Embeded 4 GB nanobsd version on CF card with CF to STAT adapter. The installation I did on my Windows PC with physdicwrite.
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Normal installation on SATA HDD. The istallation I did by booting from USB pen drive with memstick build I created before on my Windows PC with physdiskwrite
Did you tried to update BIOS to Ver 30 and disable S.M.A.R.T. dunction in BIOS? I did not figured out what exactly was the root cause for my reading errors. But afder doing this and switching off in Bios all components I do not use everthing is working fine with i386 build.
Now I'm wondering why I bought the CF card. The intention was to create a low power system for home use. But I can not see a difference in power consumption between CF card in SATA adapter and 2.5" SATA HDD. With HDD I can use HDD cache for squid. But I'm not sure if this hardware (2.5" HDD) is perfect for 24/7 in fanless system.
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Hello,
I placed an order for this mobo, i will report my results later.
I thought of running a small(<60Gb) SSD drive on this instead of a CF-solution.
Small SSD;s are quite priceworthy vs a CF-card
//Jani
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Building my first PFsense box, and saw this board recommended elsewhere on the forum based on its expected low street price (intel says $85 MSRP), its low wattage, and crucially the dual intel nics.
Besides getting a little tired of waiting for these to hit the USA retailers (just saw one site move their eta from march 5th to march 13), I'm wondering if some of the other canoe creek atom ITX boards would do just as well, or better.
D2500HN is only a single Lan, same everything else as the d2500cc, but readily available for as little as $70 shipped.
D2700MUD has a 2.13ghz cpu vs the 1.86ghz 2500, and has hyperthreading, which neither 2500 does.
Would adding a pci intel gigabit card to either of these boards give me the same throughput as the dual nic d2500cce? Worth noting that I only have 20/5 Fios internet at the moment,but my aim is to allow this box to last as long as possible.
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Would adding a pci intel gigabit card to either of these boards give me the same throughput as the dual nic d2500cce?
The best the PCI bus could do is run one direction of a gigabit ethernet at line speed in ONE direction. The dual nics are probably capable of running both NICs at line speed in both directions concurrently. I don't know if the limiting factor will be the hardware or the software.
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Hello,
I got pfsense2.0.1-i386 running pretty much straight out of the box.
Updated bios to latest, attached a HDD and a USB-cdrom, chose "3", Boot Pfsense using USB.
A bit of artifacts on the install screen(s) but F10(refresh) helps (screenmap us-ascii_to_cp437.scm seemed a bit better)
Found on-board NICs without any problems, also installed a quad PCI NIC. All working.
kldload coretemp works for temperatures (http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=39595.0)
So far so good, been running it for 1,5h :)
Regards
Jani![pfsense_core temps.png](/public/imported_attachments/1/pfsense_core temps.png)
![pfsense_core temps.png_thumb](/public/imported_attachments/1/pfsense_core temps.png_thumb) -
Got mine from minipc.de in Germany (delivery costs to the UK weren't too bad). Logic Supply EU store suggest they will have it in stock from 1st March.
Boot from the live CD (some odd video corruption - some characters appear as blocks rather than the character typed when you enter WAN and LAN set-up information etc.), struggling to get an embedded image to boot properly from a USB flash drive (Geometry errors)
I have same character problem. Every fourth character is blanked. Did you maybe figure out how to fix it?
Same problem here http://149.20.54.209/showthread.php?t=30337
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I have same character problem. Every fourth character is blanked. Did you maybe figure out how to fix it?
Same problem here http://149.20.54.209/showthread.php?t=30337
This kinda worked for me;
A bit of artifacts on the install screen(s) but F10(refresh) helps (screenmap us-ascii_to_cp437.scm seemed a bit better)
//Jani
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thx, I will try that
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I bought it here
http://www.cartft.com/catalog/gl/78Together with the M350 mini ITX case and the picoPSU power supply a small combination for a firewall/router.
This was the built I was looking at. But my readings on this forum:
http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,45746.0.htmlleads me to believe it will run too hot. I understand 40mm cooling fans can be fitted to the case, has anyone fitted these inside the case? any recommendations for a quiet 40mm fan or is there another case people recommend?
On another note is anyone running a usb wifi access point with this board? I would be interested to know which one and whether it fits in the hidden front usb panel.
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This was the built I was looking at. But my readings on this forum:
http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,45746.0.htmlleads me to believe it will run too hot.
Maybe if you run a stress test at 100% CPU load over long time as someone did in the feed you mentioned.
But you also can see my comment there. Running pfsense as home firewall fanless is absolutly no issue as long you do not place the case in a small cabinet without air circulation. -
well I was going to use the same case as you, M350 mini itx case and sit it inside our server cabinet. But I am slightly concerned, might use a silverstone sugo sg05 or look for a rackmountable case. Anyone else fitted this in a 2U?
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and sit it inside our server cabinet. […] or look for a rackmountable case.
When I build up my home use pfsense system my intention was to make it silent and reduce the power consumption as much as possible.
When you are planning to install it in a server cabinet don't think too much about. Take a 1U rackmount with fan. For mini ITX there are even dual rackmount cases existing where you can install two boards in one case.
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Hi guys and gals :D
I just like to say that I managed to install pfSense 2.0.1-RELEASE (amd64) from USB stick on my Intel D2500CC equipped with a WESTERN DIGITAL SCORPIO BLACK 160GB 7200RPM SATA/300 16MB.
The big challenge is of course as You all know that the output on the screen mostly displays at the last line and looks like garbish.
I installed the 32 bit version first and wrote down every single keystroke that I did. Then I reinstalled with the amd64 version and made the exakt same input. It worked! It seems to run well since installation a few hours ago, installed OpenVPN, Squid, and SquidGuard. No storage or network card attached to USB.
When booting on the USB Stick the display works well untill pressing 3 (Boot from USB)
After that, here are my answers (Don't write them too fast):n ENTER
em0 ENTER
em1 ENTER
ENTER
y ENTER
(wait some time here!)
99 ENTERWhen the installation to disk starts with the blueish screen I can't recall what I wrote and my notes are blurry. Sometimes it works to see some text if You use the arrows, left, right, up and down. Sometimes it's blurred. Maybe if You make a 32 bit install first you can write down your answers and follow them. Now, when it's finally installed I hope I won't need the screen again until the graphic card diriver has been fixed.
BTW Before doing the procedure described aboveI tried to install with the lastest nighly 64 bit build just to find out if the problem has been fixed. It hasn't, it's the same.
Good luck! -
This is an upstream bug in FreeBSD, I'm afraid. The new Intel Atoms with the PowerVR graphics have major graphics compatibility issues with FreeBSD, and with Windows for that matter. They only seem to be really well supported on Linux. I'm using a D2700 board with 2.1-development in a live install. I'm using the i386 build, which one can, as you note, manage to install. I suppose if you memorize all your answers, 64-bit could install but I didn't see it as having enough benefit to be worth the headache.
Realize that with these boards, you have to use 32-bit Windows 7 due to there being no graphics driver support for 64-bit; and that some of these boards have 64-bit support disabled in the BIOS (for obvious reason). This is a 32.5-bit chipset (a not-real term I just made up to poke fun at this chipset). The processor is 64-bit, but unless you use Linux, you can't get working graphics in 64-bit. In 2011 (when this chipset came out), that's absolutely ridiculous. More importantly, the fact FreeBSD's console video doesn't even work (again it's hard to describe if you haven't seen it) and has glitches even in 32-bit mode, indicates severe underlying compatibility issues with the PowerVR chipset.
Oddly, Linux (even 64-bit) console video works fine, but that's with the latest Ubuntu that I believe uses a higher graphics mode. Even more odd, FreeDOS also works fine, without any of the missing characters. I'm no expert, but my understanding is that basic console video between FreeBSD and FreeDOS should be the same darn thing. Still, I wouldn't begin to blame FreeBSD and definitely not pfSense. This is an upstream bug that seems to be related to something severely broken in this chipset. Sorry Intel, but this is a fail.
If it helps you any, once installed on a D2700, 32-bit 2.1 snapshots have been rock solid (2.1 needed for Realtek drivers on the board I'm using), though sadly 2.1 is far from feature complete (VLANs don't work with traffic shaping yet, which I consider a pretty key feature).
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Just as a heads-up:
2 days ago, there has been a commit to the FreeBSD source which fixes the video corruption.
Oh and thanks to Plisken. Using his instructions you can install pfsense 2.x amd64 on that board.
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Will that commit to the FreeBSD source make it into 8.3 though, or will it not apply until pfSense switches to 9.x?
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http://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/2595
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That still does not answer the question. It says it is going in 2.1. Does that mean the nightly pfSense builds include this fix. I tried a nightly from a few days ago, no luck. I have not been able to get nano with serial support to work either, so I am patiently waiting for a fix. Thanks for any insight.
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I think I found the answer here:
http://redmine.pfsense.org/projects/pfsense/issues?fixed_version_id=5&set_filter=1&status_id=o&subproject_id=!*
It shows "New". I assume it will show "Feedback" when it is included and ready for testing. I will keep an eye out and test it as soon as it is included in the nightly builds.
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Well thanks to Plisken I was able to install the pfSense-2.0.1-RELEASE-2g-amd64-nanobsd_vga on to my Intel D2500CCE.
Booting off a 2Gb Kingston CF via a SATA to CF adapter.
I did have a problem with my original picked 8Gb CF Card which was a Sandisk extreme (didn't look at it when I picked it up out of the tray)
It wouldn't boot with this card at all with either the 4g-amd64 or 4g-i386 nanobsd. I would get a read error, just after you see F1 pfsense, F2 pfsense F6 PXD?.
Didn't matter what I did in the bios. Then grabbed the slower Kingston card and dd over 2g-i386 nanobsd.
Booted up straight away. I wrote down the keystrokes I had to do to get it up and running, then dd over 2g-amd64 nanobsd.
Waited till I saw no more text movement, and entered the following (not entering whats in the "")
n enter "VLAN setup"
em0 enter "WAN"
em1 enter "LAN"
em2 enter "Option 1"
em3 enter "Option 2"
enter "any more Options ports, enter to continue"
y enter "confirm port selection and continue"
waited for the sound saying it had booted, then I could log on via a browser, and finish the rest.
I have a dual gigabit port intel server card installed into the PCI slot as OPT1 and OPT2 that is why the extra em2 and em3 key strokes.
If you don't have more than 2 NIC just don't leave out
em2 enter
em3 enter
I now have it up and running, and configuring it for my setup.
Thx -
Can a few using the Intel 2500cc post the power consumption?
I want to use the same board on several pfsense builds. I am using a via Samuel 2 board for my home box and it uses 41watts on boot up and 35-37 watts continuous. Trying to into to the 25 watts area.
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Which C3 are you running? You should be drawing less than that at idle. The best thing you can do to reduce power consumption is use a high efficiency power supply. Some PSUs claim to be highly efficient but in reality are only much good when working at or close to their maximum output. Since you're drawing <50W you probably have something far too big.
Steve
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Can a few using the Intel 2500cc post the power consumption?
19W idle, 20W when rebooting, measured at the mains with a KillAWatt. The board is a CCE rather than a CC.
I was quite surprised, since my toy webserver has dual P3s, how fast that Atom boots! It's not fully config'd yet, and therefore not online. It's a full default install straight off the iso image, lives in an Antec 300 case, has 4GB, a WD 320GB Black 2.5" drive as the boot and storage device, and currently an ASUS cd/dvd drive as the install device. I'm driving it with a 102W pico-psu. I suspect the "brick" is not the best quality, since it's warmer than I expected for so small a draw.
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Thank you MMacD and stephenw10.
Not sure what you are asking? C3? I was doing some contact work for wayport. They had me replace a shallow 1u rackmount via server w/ 80 gig IDE…... Well I own it now since they never sent me a return FEDEX label. This enabled me to build the pfsense box for free. My best guess is the chassis is a pre-2004 180 watt ps w/ fan and two chassis fans.
Yes, I use the killawatt unit. I am finding the 2500cce for around $99 us and can find a complete package (mb, 2gig ram, ps, and the 350 chassis) for under $200 us. But I want a 1u or 2u rackmount chassis.
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Sorry. C3 is what VIA were calling their processors that had the Samuel 2 core.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_VIA_C3_microprocessors#.22Samuel_2.22_.28150_nm.29
I guess I was really asking what speed the CPU runs at?I have a miniITX board here that runs an Ezra core C3 900 and it uses <25W. It uses a DC-DC PSU (like the PicoPSU).
Steve