Problems on a watchguard x550e

stephenw10

So all pfSense boxes then? I wonder if it's some hardware offloading option that doesn't work with v6. Pure guess. ::)

Steve

drdyno

However I am now getting

ad0: TIMEOUT - READ_DMA timed out LBA=512

time outs and failure on boot

stephenw10

Exactly what image did you flash to the CF card? DMA should be disabled on the standard Nano images.

Steve

drdyno

nanobsd-4g image

i was working on getting other this running and had just added entries into

/boot/loader.conf.local

and rebooted then I get these errors

stephenw10

What entries?

Steve

drdyno

hw.msk.msi_disable=1
hint.p4tcc.0.disabled=1
hint.acpi_throttle.0.disabled=1
if_sk_load="yes"
if_msk_load="yes"

stephenw10

Hmm, Ok. Those all look like things you probably want to have.
Look in /boot/loader.conf, you should see some entries disabling DMA:


hw.ata.atapi_dma="0"
hw.ata.ata_dma="0"
hw.ata.wc="0"

The CF card slot on the X-e box doesn't have the pins that support DMA connected so if it tries to use it it fails.

Steve

drdyno

ok so dumb question.

how do i get to the /boot/loader.conf.local file if it won't boot?

drdyno

nm i may have it figured out

chpalmer

@drdyno:

However I am now getting

ad0: TIMEOUT - READ_DMA timed out LBA=512

time outs and failure on boot

Scandisk brand card?

stephenw10

Interesting question.
Can you boot from the alternate slice at the boot loader?
I'm suddenly unsure of what appears at boot via the serial console.
If you can escape at the boot load prompt you can issue a:

set hw.ata.ata_dma="0"
boot

See: https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Boot_Troubleshooting#NanoBSD_on_Newer_Hardware

If you've made a whole series of changes and revisions it might be time to re-image the card anyway.

I don't think it's that Scandisk error since that usually displays 'NID not found'.
https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/DMA_and_LBA_Errors#Non-Fatal_Errors
I could be wrong though.

Steve

drdyno

no its a duracell brand card.. only thing i could find from fry's at the time.

I over wrote my loader.conf instead of writing it to loader.conf.local
DOH!

fixed now though..

trying to figure out now if it is the hardware slowing it all down

I get 54/11 from my poweredge

and get 25/10 out of the firebox

stephenw10

Can easily happen. ;)

With that CPU you should see in excess of 500Mbps. You will be limited by that fact that the X550e has only the sk interfaces which all share a single PCI bus.
Which reminds me you don't need these lines in loader.conf.local since you don't have msk NICs:


hw.msk.msi_disable=1
if_msk_load="yes"

Steve

chpalmer

@stephenw10:

Can easily happen. ;)

With that CPU you should see in excess of 500Mbps. You will be limited by that fact that the X550e has only the sk interfaces which all share a single PCI bus.
Which reminds me you don't need these lines in loader.conf.local since you don't have msk NICs:
hw.msk.msi_disable=1
if_msk_load="yes"
Steve

Unless your lucky enough to have liberated the addin card out of a bad x1250 in order to add it to your x550… ;D 8)

Thanks for the links about the errors. Ive just ignored them on the logs with no issues on a production box at a remote site. But it would be nice to not see them again.

drdyno

1 other thing, I know it always comes up about the fans being too loud.. I recently ordered some Noctua 40mm fans for a different project and they work great.. however they come with a low noise adapter that I used on the stock fans inside the firebox and it makes them very quiet.

here is an image of them
http://i.ebayimg.com/t/Noctua-Fan-Low-Noise-Adapter-NA-RC11-/00/s/MTAwMFg3NTA=/z/PkIAAMXQC-tTFgZE/$_35.JPG

Steve,

I switched from my laptop to a desktop with gigabit cards to see if that helped at all.

I got 57/11 off of the desktop.. I have an old panasonic toughbook cf-29 that was slowing it down

Jeff

stephenw10

You know about the WGXepc program for slowing the fans though yes?
https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/PfSense_on_Watchguard_Firebox#Controlling_hardware_with_WGXepc

Steve

drdyno

Steve,

so you can only control this through CLI correct? I saw some stuff that it maybe going to be included in the LCDproc package? what is the status of that?

Also I am looking for rackmount ears for a watchguard x550e if anyone has a set they want to get rid of.

Jeff

stephenw10

Yes, it's a command line program but you can add it via the ShellCMD package to make it run at boot. There is some support for the LEDs in the LCD driver but it very limited, there's no good way of triggering it from the lcdproc client.

Steve