PfSense with Gigabyte GA-J1900N-D3V

Wolly · Jul 10, 2014, 6:12 AM

Hmm, well that's odd behaviour. You could well be right, Realtek do like to change hardware.
What does pciconf list the NIC as? The PCI revision usually indicates what the NIC type is.

Steve

Due to the problems with the nic on bare-metal pfSense I've decided to use esxi and run pfSense on top of that. As it turns out this is something I should've done right from the beginning, it works perfect.

w00t · Jul 24, 2014, 10:36 AM

Any new information regarding this board? Does the NIC's works out of the box?

stephenw10 · Jul 24, 2014, 11:40 AM

Which board? There are two being discussed here.

Steve

w00t · Jul 24, 2014, 11:47 AM

@stephenw10:

Which board? There are two being discussed here.

Steve

Oh, the topic board, GA-J1900N-D3V. But GA-C1037UN-EU as well then.

@pete.s.:

I just wanted to add that I'm running the GA-C1037UN-EU board earlier mentioned in this thread.

I'm running it with an additional NIC in the PCI port, so have three NICs all in all. I also use vlans and everything is working great.

@Wolly:

Due to the problems with the nic on bare-metal pfSense I've decided to use esxi and run pfSense on top of that. As it turns out this is something I should've done right from the beginning, it works perfect.

So I'm kinda torn here if it's working or not. At the moment these two motherboard are the only ones I can get my hands on in my area that have 2x onboard NIC's :/

stephenw10 · Jul 24, 2014, 12:01 PM

It's hard to know. It appears from the comments here that Gigabyte may have changed the chip on the board or Realtek updated it somehow on the GA-C1037UN.
The GA-J1900N-D3V doesn't have any reported issues with the NIC if you can get pfSense installed in the first place. ::)

Steve

w00t · Jul 24, 2014, 9:34 PM

@stephenw10:

It's hard to know. It appears from the comments here that Gigabyte may have changed the chip on the board or Realtek updated it somehow on the GA-C1037UN.
The GA-J1900N-D3V doesn't have any reported issues with the NIC if you can get pfSense installed in the first place. ::)

Steve

Heh, I see. I will then order the GA-J1900N-D3V and report back in a few days ;)

stephenw10 · Jul 24, 2014, 10:16 PM

Have you read this whole thread?
There are people who have failed to make pfSense boot at all on that board.

Steve

w00t · Jul 25, 2014, 7:16 AM

@stephenw10:

Have you read this whole thread?
There are people who have failed to make pfSense boot at all on that board.

Steve

Yes! I know there is a lot of problems. I'll try and follow this guy. Also there is a new F3 BIOS that I would like to try.

@dwaler:

I bought this board (only found out about this thread afterwards) last Monday, together with 2 x 4GB Crucial Ballistix @ 1.35V and a 60GB Kingston (SSDNow). After having upgraded to F2 (which was indeed a bit of a pain) I got 2.2-ALPHA running without further issues. I followed the guides elsewhere on the forum and enabled CSM as well as disabling C-State. I've also enabled TRIM support by rebooting into single-user mode and running 'tunefs -t enable /'.

As mentioned, running smooth now and not seeing any issues (yet). Will keep it running for another night before replacing my old firewall though (m0n0wall on an ancient Nokia IP110), just to be sure :)

Just thought I'd share some positive news, hope this helps somebody!

w00t · Aug 4, 2014, 6:46 AM

@stephenw10:

Have you read this whole thread?
There are people who have failed to make pfSense boot at all on that board.

Steve

Successfully booted pfSense on GA-J1900N-D3V. Will update this post later with tutorial and BIOS settings. EDIT2: After you are on F3 BIOS, pfSense alpha 2.2 seems to boot with no issues.

EDIT: Alright got everything working, almost..

First of all, you need to update the BIOS to F3 since the motherboard probably will ship with F1.

Update BIOS

Power on the MB and reset the BIOS to defaults.
Create a bootable USB of Windows 8/8.1 and install on a spare harddrive (do it on the motherboard itself, not another computer), F1 will kinda only boot to Win8-USB's.
When successfully booted to Win8, visit http://www.gigabyte.us/products/product-page.aspx?pid=4918#utility and change to your installed OS, download and install Microsoft .NET Framework 4 (probably not necessary, the install will thell you) and then APP Center.
Start APP Center from C:\Program\Gigabyte or such, and wait for the shitty program to start. When loaded, update the damn thing.
Use the APP Center program to download @BIOS.
When installed, use @BIOS from the APP Center to download and flash F3, choose "Install from server" or similar, follow the steps and you will be on F3 in a moment.
Reboot and enter BIOS to check that you are on F3, if thats the case, once again do reset BIOS to defaults.
Power off and remove harddrive and Win8 USB.

Create bootable pfSense

Download the memstick or nanobsd-vga version (your choice if you want to install full version to another USB-stick or run the embedded version) from pfSense download-page. I have been using nanobsd-vga for this test.
Flash the .img to you USB-stick, win32 image writer works like a charm.

BIOS settings

Attach the pfSense USB and boot to BIOS.
Reset to default, and ONLY change the following:

Advanced -> CSM Configuration

CSM Support - Enabled
Boot Option filter - Legacy Only
Network - Do not launch
Storage - Legacy Only
Video - UEFI First
Other PCI devices - Legacy Only

Advanced -> USB Configuration

Legacy USB support - Enabled
USB3.0 support - Enabled
XHCI hand-off - Disabled
EHCI hand-off - Disabled
USB Mass storage device support - Enabled

Under USB configuration you should see your USB-stick listed.

Chipset -> South Bridge (I think? If I remembered correctly.)

Restore after AC power loss - Power On

Under boot, change harddrive BBS priority and set you USB-stick to #1, then change first boot option to your USB-stick and disable #2 boot option.

Thats it, now reboot and hopefully your pfSense-stick will boot. As I said, got everything working, almost. It seems like the first boot, you will always get an acpi panic error. I havn't been able to pinpoint what's causing it, but it seems to NOT be related to speedstep/power technology(Energi efficient)/cpu c-states. When you get the prompt within pfSense with the panic error, just type "reboot" and everything will boot just fine (or hit the physical reset switch). A reboot within pfSense (from the WebUI or promt) will work with no panic error. When you halt the machine and boot it up again, you will stuck on acpi panic error and need to reboot from the prompt (or hit the physical reset switch).

Also, pfSense will not get WAN IP from DHCP after the initial setup, when the initial wizard is done, just reboot and you will get IP from DHCP. What I have seen, this problem only occured right after the initial wizard.

If anyone got any input regarding the strange acpi panic error at first boot, please comment.

Sidenote: When doin a speedtest on my home connection (250/100Mbit) the CPU-usage is around 15-18%. Great board for home usage! (not so great for producation as long as we got the strange first boot problem) :)

FarmerB3d · Jul 29, 2014, 10:41 PM

Hi,

I bought this board on Friday and had no luck with it.
I was on F2 and it worked but unstable. After upgrading to F3 I get a Bogus Interrupt panic on boot. Trying your reboot and bios settings did not help me. :(

I don't want to give up on it though…

FarmerB3d · Jul 30, 2014, 6:08 AM

@w00t

Is there a revision or some other build info on your mobo? I'm curious about why yours came with F1 bios and mine with F2. There must be something different between the boards.

w00t · Jul 30, 2014, 4:52 PM

@FarmerB3d:

Hi,

I bought this board on Friday and had no luck with it.
I was on F2 and it worked but unstable. After upgrading to F3 I get a Bogus Interrupt panic on boot. Trying your reboot and bios settings did not help me. :(

I don't want to give up on it though…

Check my previous post and reset BIOS to defaults and only change the settings listed in the post.

@FarmerB3d:

@w00t

Is there a revision or some other build info on your mobo? I'm curious about why yours came with F1 bios and mine with F2. There must be something different between the boards.

AFAIK there is only one revision, rev1.0. It could just be the case that you got a motherboard from a newer batch from Gigabyte that shipped with F2.

FarmerB3d · Jul 30, 2014, 5:06 PM

Yup, always reset to default. Dud apply only the changes you suggested but still same result.

My board also rev 1.0.

I wonder why there is a difference? Grasping at straws but I wonder if there is a difference in the bios version? Any chance you could email me the file you have?
I'm collecting straws so might as well continue… :(

w00t · Jul 30, 2014, 7:15 PM

@FarmerB3d:

Yup, always reset to default. Dud apply only the changes you suggested but still same result.

My board also rev 1.0.

I wonder why there is a difference? Grasping at straws but I wonder if there is a difference in the bios version? Any chance you could email me the file you have?
I'm collecting straws so might as well continue… :(

Hm, I can't send you the BIOS-version I have since chose "Download BIOS from server and flash" within the @BIOS application. You read the whole comment right? I also get the acpi panic error at first boot, and need to manually reboot from the pfsense terminal prompt.

FarmerB3d · Jul 30, 2014, 8:06 PM

ok, so the difference is that I don't have win8 so to update the bios I downloaded the latest (F3 - 2014/04/14) and made a boot disk with Rufus and applied it. It took it without a problem. I've since flashed it again and it's happy.

No amount of disabling stuff made a difference - it had the panic time after time. :(

However….

I found another post somewhere about 2.2 and that some got it working. I downloaded the latest beta version (30th July) and booted into that without a problem.
Obviously, this leaves me in a weird place as I don't really want to be using beta but I'll see how it goes in the coming weeks. There are a number of people who say 2.2 is just fine for them and they've had no problems so here's hoping....

I would have loved for it to work easily from the word go but hey ho.... This should be ok :)

w00t · Jul 31, 2014, 2:44 PM

@FarmerB3d:

ok, so the difference is that I don't have win8 so to update the bios I downloaded the latest (F3 - 2014/04/14) and made a boot disk with Rufus and applied it. It took it without a problem. I've since flashed it again and it's happy.

No amount of disabling stuff made a difference - it had the panic time after time. :(

However….

I found another post somewhere about 2.2 and that some got it working. I downloaded the latest beta version (30th July) and booted into that without a problem.
Obviously, this leaves me in a weird place as I don't really want to be using beta but I'll see how it goes in the coming weeks. There are a number of people who say 2.2 is just fine for them and they've had no problems so here's hoping....

I would have loved for it to work easily from the word go but hey ho.... This should be ok :)

Strange, works fine for me after the first reboot. I just tested 2.2 nanobsd (30th july) and can confirm, it boots just fine.

FarmerB3d · Jul 31, 2014, 2:46 PM

@w00t:

I just tested 2.2 nanobsd (30th july) and can confirm, it boots just fine.

Yup, I'm sticking with that for now and seeing how it goes. Happy it at least works :)

FarmerB3d · Aug 10, 2014, 9:22 PM

So, nearly two weeks on and I am super happy with how it's working. It's a full install on a 32GB SD I had lying around.

I am on 125Mb down / 10 up and speed test shows me 125 down and 10 up :D The CPU goes to 3% but can't really say if that is the download load or not.

Something unexpected though, I set up a VPN with PIA and routed traffic through there. Works very well and very quick. I actually get faster speeds (150 / 32) when ging via the VPN than I do normally. I am guessing it's because I have compression turned on.
When doing a speedtest via the VPN the CPU goes to 8%.

In a nutshell, the board is ideal for home (and soho?) it seems to have more grunt than is needed.
When I get my wifi setup as I want it and various subnets doing their thing then it might load up a bit but if this is anything to go by… I can't see me having a problem.

happy Camper...

Escorpiom · Aug 11, 2014, 1:00 AM

Thank you FarmerB3d for your comments, I'm in the process of setting up a similar config, it's great to hear that it works fine.
The only bummer with this board would be the PCI slot, no PCI-e network cards can be installed.
I don't know how effective the USB3.0 is with network adapters.
For now I'll just stick with a PCI two ports Broadcom network card for a total of 4 ports.

Cheers.

FarmerB3d · Aug 11, 2014, 6:11 AM

The PCI thing is a bit of a bummer - why the still put 1980's tech on these boards I don't know :o

I wonder if something like this would work?
http://linitx.com/product/mini-pci-express-card-to-pci-express-x1-socket-9cm-cable-left-sided/12894