Installation on Intel D2500CC (atom with dual NIC board)

noggin

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…

Tubs

@jms703:

Where did you guys find this board?

I bought it here
http://www.cartft.com/catalog/gl/78

Together with the M350 mini ITX case and the picoPSU power supply a small combination for a firewall/router.

Jani

@noggin

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

noggin

@Tubs:

@jms703:

Where did you guys find this board?

I bought it here
http://www.cartft.com/catalog/gl/78

Together with the M350 mini ITX case and the picoPSU power supply a small combination for a firewall/router.

Yep - CarTFT and MiniPC.de appear to be the same company.

noggin

@Jani:

@noggin

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…

Tubs

@noggin:

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:

Embeded 4 GB nanobsd version on CF card with CF to STAT adapter. The installation I did on my Windows PC with physdicwrite.
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.

Jani

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

katz

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.

wallabybob

@katz:

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.

Jani

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)

firbc

@noggin:

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

Jani

@firbc:

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;

@jani:

A bit of artifacts on the install screen(s) but F10(refresh) helps (screenmap us-ascii_to_cp437.scm seemed a bit better)

//Jani

firbc

thx, I will try that

charlie0440

@Tubs:

I bought it here
http://www.cartft.com/catalog/gl/78

Together 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.html

leads 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.

Tubs

@charlie0440:

This was the built I was looking at. But my readings on this forum:
http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,45746.0.html

leads 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.

charlie0440

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?

Tubs

@charlie0440:

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.

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 ENTER

When 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!

markuhde

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).

t3h0th3r

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.