Hardware purchase advice please

stephenw10

Fair enough. Since you've actually used that board I'll definitely go by your judgement. :)

I don't think they make the 65W model any more, the 80W should be sufficient don't you think?

Steve

robi

Yes, I guess.

jimmybob

You can add a wifi card at any time. I would recommend starting with the simplest system you can. Adding and testing more interfaces or packages in stages will result in fewer problems.

The biggest advantage of an Atom is that its peak power consumption is low. You can get a system that consumes a very small amount of power most of the time, my own Pentium-M setup is <25W, but because at peak load it consumes more you need much better cooling provision. The Atom can be passively cooled relatively easily for this reason.

If you think that 30W is low, check this out: http://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/8217/fluffy2-59-watt-high-end-desktop-computer.html :)

Steve

Hi Steve,

Thanks for your advice.

I will not be adding the Wifi card right away but I'm curious to which would be the best for general connectivity and range coverage?
I do want the fastest speed possible for wifi.
So I'm looking for the "best" option on what is avail from the shop I will be using below…
Also taking into consideration pfsense support.

Here are what I was looking at. At this store....

http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=17

I was considering this since it seems to be the better one....
Intel Ultimate-N 633AN Half-Mini PCIe Wireless Card - up to 450 Mbps
I know you'd need all 3 antennas to achieve this.
Which is where perhaps I'd need to drill a few more holes in the case ;)

would it be of benefit and most of all is it fully supported by pfsense?

stephenw10

Wifi hardware support in pfSense is… limited. ;) Especially under 2.0.X. It's built on FreeBSD 8.1 which was released in July 2010. Anything newer than that is unlikely to be supported. There is no support for 802.11N outside of the specific drivers so although some hardware will work it will only be at 'G' speeds.
There is better support in 2.1 since it's built on FreeBSD 8.3 and some drivers from 9 have been back ported. The best supported cards are those based on Atheros chips-sets.

The best source of information is JimP's spreadsheet:
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AojFUXcbH0ROdHgwYkFHbkRUdV9hVWljVWl5SXkxbFE&hl=en

Steve

jimmybob

@stephenw10:

Wifi hardware support in pfSense is… limited. ;) Especially under 2.0.X. It's built on FreeBSD 8.1 which was released in July 2010. Anything newer than that is unlikely to be supported. There is no support for 802.11N outside of the specific drivers so although some hardware will work it will only be at 'G' speeds.
There is better support in 2.1 since it's built on FreeBSD 8.3 and some drivers from 9 have been back ported. The best supported cards are those based on Atheros chips-sets.

The best source of information is JimP's spreadsheet:
http://www.draisberghof.de/usb_modeswitch/bb/viewtopic.php?t=983

Steve

Hi,

I don't see any spreadsheet.. Am I missing something on the link you provided.

So is there danger of newer cards not been supported at all or just at slower speeds?

stephenw10

Nooo, copy and paste fail! :-[
See corrected link above.

There is a danger of no support at all. FreeBSD hardware support lags behind other OSs anyway and pfSense lags that by a bit.

Steve

robi

I would strongly advise to use a dedicated, separate AP for wifi. pfSense is not really meant to be a wifi router.

jimmybob

@robi:

I would strongly advise to use a dedicated, separate AP for wifi. pfSense is not really meant to be a wifi router.

OK, I think I will skip it anyhow.
Maybe look at it at a later date.

thanks

pvoigt

@stephenw10:

I would think the 120W pico-psu will be over kill, I would not expect that box to use more than 30W at any time, mostly a lot less.

Steve

I'm using the Jetway NF99FL-525 with 3 Intel NIC Daughterboard, 1 Compex abg WLAN card and 1 CF attached to SATA via SATA2CF converter. With a standard 300 W ATX power supply it's consuming ~33 W - measured with a power meter. With a picoPSU you will probably reduce power consumption below 30 W. That's why I go along with Steve's opinion: 120 W picoPSU will be overkill :) Of course, my 300 W ATX PSU is overkill as well, but it's currently impossible to get a smaller standard ATX PSU.

hackin8

pvoigt - would this be any better for you?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HIPRO-100W-ATX-PSU-Power-Supply-Unit-HP-A1463F5-/230822905477

jimmybob

With the Sata to CF converter. Should I select IDE or SATA mode in BIOS?
Assuming the bios on this motherboard will offer that choice?

pvoigt

@jimmybob:

With the Sata to CF converter. Should I select IDE or SATA mode in BIOS?
Assuming the bios on this motherboard will offer that choice?

Tested so far following CF converters:
http://www.delock.de/produkte/F_283_2-5_91697/merkmale.html?setLanguage=en
http://www.delock.de/produkte/F_283_2-5_91661/merkmale.html?setLanguage=en

Using BIOS IDE mode.

Peter

pvoigt

@hackin8:

pvoigt - would this be any better for you?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HIPRO-100W-ATX-PSU-Power-Supply-Unit-HP-A1463F5-/230822905477

You may be right because its power data seems more appropriate. One the other hand I am using a 80+ PSU (Enermax). Only if I can directly compare both PSU I will become more wise :)

I suppose most effective would be using a picoPSU. I once decided to go with the ATX PSU because I wanted to use a standard miniITX case which could be re-used by another machine in the future.

Peter

jimmybob

The CF card I have is a 16GB… do I just use the 4GB image with that?
pfSense-2.0.3-RELEASE-4g-i386-nanobsd_vga-20130412-1022.img.gz
Is this the correct image?

This will be going on an Atom 1.8 with VGA output only.

pvoigt

@jimmybob:

The CF card I have is a 16GB… do I just use the 4GB image with that?
pfSense-2.0.3-RELEASE-4g-i386-nanobsd_vga-20130412-1022.img.gz
Is this the correct image?

This will be going on an Atom 1.8 with VGA output only.

This will work without problems. With this image you will have a VGA console. Mostly, a 4 GB CF will be sufficient for the 4 GB image. However, some CF seem to not provide full capacity so e.g a 4 GB image cannot be successfully written to a 4 GB CF. I've read somewhere in the pfSense forum about it but cannot remember the threads - sorry.

I am mostly using 4 GB CF and write a 2 GB image to it - just to be one the safe side :).

Peter

jimmybob

pfSense-2.0.3-RELEASE-4g-i386-nanobsd_vga-20130412-1022.img.gz

With the above image I read about serial port and that I won't see a console?

Will I deffo get a cmd promp with the above image?
And will the CF boot up once I install the image to it using Manuel Kasper's phydiskwrite ?

thanks

pvoigt

@jimmybob:

pfSense-2.0.3-RELEASE-4g-i386-nanobsd_vga-20130412-1022.img.gz

With the above image I read about serial port and that I won't see a console?

Will I deffo get a cmd promp with the above image?
And will the CF boot up once I install the image to it using Manuel Kasper's phydiskwrite ?

thanks

Well, the above image will provide a vga console. If you want a serial console only, you should use
pfSense-2.0.3-RELEASE-4g-i386-nanobsd-20130412-1022.img.gz - without "vga" in its name. A "cmd prompt" will be provided by both images.

I had issues using physdiskwrite and was more successful with "win32diskimager". I used version 0.6 a while ago. Latest version is 0.7:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/. Alternatively, you can use "dd" under Linux (or Unix).

EDIT: We are slowly driving off-topic. If you are still having general installation questions I propose to open a new thread in the corresponding pfSense forum :).

jimmybob

So if I have a CMD prompt which I've seen where you pick WAN, LAN etc.

What is the difference between VGA and non-VGA versions specifically?
I thought CMD prompt was what VGA was?

stephenw10

A command prompt is simply a text prompt where you can enter a command. It appears on the console. The console can be accessed either by keyboard and monitor (VGA) or via a serial connection.

If you want to use a keyboard and monitor directly on the pfSense box use a nanobsd_vga image.

@http://www.pfsense.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=43&Itemid=44:

Embedded (NanoBSD)

The embedded version is specifically tailored for use with any hardware using Compact Flash rather than a hard drive. CF cards can only handle a limited number of writes, so the embedded version runs read only from CF, with read/write file systems as RAM disks. The NanoBSD platform has two OS slices and a config slice. One OS slice is used to boot from, the other is used for upgrades, and the config slice is where the configuration is held separately.

There are two variations of the NanoBSD platform: The default version which uses a serial console, and another that supports using a VGA console. Each of those variations also comes sized for different sizes of CF cards.

The filename for NanoBSD downloads is laid out as follows: pfSense-2.0.3-RELEASE-size-arch-nanobsd.img.gz. In that filename, size can be one of 512mb, 1g, 2g, or 4g. The arch, as above is for i386 or amd64. The nanobsd part can is either nanobsd for serial console, or nanobsd_vga for the VGA-enabled version.

Steve

pvoigt

@jimmybob:

So if I have a CMD prompt which I've seen where you pick WAN, LAN etc.

What is the difference between VGA and non-VGA versions specifically?
I thought CMD prompt was what VGA was?

The VGA images are useful only for boards with a vga adapter. There are boards like most boards of the Alix series from PC Engines which do not have a VGA adapter. You cannot use them with a VGA image. You need the non-VGA images instead and you get your console via serial line.

Peter