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X11SBA-LN4F vs A1SRi-2558F

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  • E
    endy66
    last edited by Mar 2, 2016, 8:06 PM

    Day 4 without any issue. I will check that for the next few days and will report here, but it seems to look not bad:)

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    • E
      endy66
      last edited by Mar 11, 2016, 6:18 PM

      After 13 days without any Watchdog timeout, i can say that the Problem is solved for me, by increasing the mbuf size to 1000000. I hope it stays stable:)

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      • E
        Engineer
        last edited by Mar 12, 2016, 2:32 AM

        @endy66:

        After 13 days without any Watchdog timeout, i can say that the Problem is solved for me, by increasing the mbuf size to 1000000. I hope it stays stable:)

        Interesting.  I had the same mbuf size of 1000000 and still had the watchdog timeouts.  Regardless, up over 60 days since the board has been 'repaired' (whatever that means from SuperMicro).

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        • E
          endy66
          last edited by Mar 12, 2016, 8:11 PM

          Tomorrow i will install my new 500Mbit/s Cable Connection and make some Tests, hope there will be no Watchdog Timeouts. Does this Problem also occur on the A1SRi-2558F Board or is this only on the X11SBA-LN4F?

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          • E
            Engineer
            last edited by Mar 13, 2016, 2:53 AM

            @endy66:

            Tomorrow i will install my new 500Mbit/s Cable Connection and make some Tests, hope there will be no Watchdog Timeouts. Does this Problem also occur on the A1SRi-2558F Board or is this only on the X11SBA-LN4F?

            I know it happens on the X11SBA-LN4F and X11SBA-F (from what I've read) but have saw nothing on the 2558F board.

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            • J
              Jailer
              last edited by Mar 13, 2016, 5:10 AM

              Still watching this thread closely. This board is everything I'm looking for but if the timeout issue doesn't get resolved I won't go ahead with it.

              Gonna have to wait for a bit anyway. Life gets in the way and we are on a spending moratorium until jr's medical bills stop rolling in.  :-\

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              • E
                endy66
                last edited by Mar 18, 2016, 9:22 PM

                Ok after a lot of testing, the watchdog timeouts are still here :(. Is this problem related to the x64 platform? I havent tested the x86 version of pfsense on this board yet, but if no one with these problems have done it, i can test it.

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                • C
                  cmb
                  last edited by Mar 18, 2016, 9:30 PM

                  @endy66:

                  Ok after a lot of testing, the watchdog timeouts are still here :(. Is this problem related to the x64 platform?

                  No. I'd try 2.3, the newer drivers may fix.

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                  • E
                    endy66
                    last edited by Mar 19, 2016, 5:57 AM

                    @cmb:

                    @endy66:

                    Ok after a lot of testing, the watchdog timeouts are still here :(. Is this problem related to the x64 platform?

                    No. I'd try 2.3, the newer drivers may fix.

                    Ok, then i will install the newest build now and test it. Will report later, if the newer included drivers fix the problem.

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                    • E
                      endy66
                      last edited by Mar 19, 2016, 6:58 AM

                      So, i have tested with the newest 2.3 build, but still the same issue. The watchdog times out. I think there is no other solution, as to RMA the board.

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                      • ?
                        Guest
                        last edited by Mar 19, 2016, 10:55 AM

                        I think there is no other solution, as to RMA the board.

                        Did you try out high up the mbuf size? Could be a solution but is also based on the
                        amount of RAM inside of your pfSense box! If to less RAM is there after doing so, you
                        will end in a booting loop. With 8 GB you will be fine using 500.000 or 1.000.000.
                        Could solve it, but is not a must be!

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                        • E
                          endy66
                          last edited by Mar 19, 2016, 11:52 AM

                          @BlueKobold:

                          I think there is no other solution, as to RMA the board.

                          Did you try out high up the mbuf size? Could be a solution but is also based on the
                          amount of RAM inside of your pfSense box! If to less RAM is there after doing so, you
                          will end in a booting loop. With 8 GB you will be fine using 500.000 or 1.000.000.
                          Could solve it, but is not a must be!

                          Yes i tried that. It works a Little bit better, but the timeout is still here on high load.

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                          • E
                            endy66
                            last edited by Mar 21, 2016, 9:44 PM

                            Today, i searched the exact specs from my previous board, which i used as a pfsense box. It was a Supermicro X10SBA, which uses a Intel i210-AT chipset for the NICs…EXACTLY the same chipset, which is on the X1SBA-LN4F. So, how is it possible, that there are such problems (e.g. the "watchdog timeouts") on the newer board, which contains rhe same NIC chipset? On the older X10SBA i had NEVER suvh problems, this board was running over 1 year without any issue, since the first day i set up pfsense.

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                            • E
                              Engineer
                              last edited by Mar 22, 2016, 1:37 AM Mar 22, 2016, 1:32 AM

                              @endy66:

                              Today, i searched the exact specs from my previous board, which i used as a pfsense box. It was a Supermicro X10SBA, which uses a Intel i210-AT chipset for the NICs…EXACTLY the same chipset, which is on the X1SBA-LN4F. So, how is it possible, that there are such problems (e.g. the "watchdog timeouts") on the newer board, which contains rhe same NIC chipset? On the older X10SBA i had NEVER suvh problems, this board was running over 1 year without any issue, since the first day i set up pfsense.

                              It's not the i210-AT that's the issue from what we can tell.  Port 1 is fine.  It's ports 2,3 and 4 that have the issues.  It was posted very early in the thread that ports 2,3 and 4 are connected to the PCIe lanes via a PCIe switching chip, the Pericom 608GP.  It seems there is some sort of hardware design issue in the original board that causes the watchdog timeouts on the 3 ports attached to the 608GP.  Whatever the issue, SM states that a hardware modification was done (don't specify on what) which corrects the issue.  Have been up 70 days with no issues after getting my board back.

                              Now if the X10SBA uses the Pericom 608GP chip, it would seem that SuperMicro didn't make the same mistake on that board as they did on the X1SBA-L / LN4F boards.

                              Edit:  the X10SBA uses the PLX_PEX8605 PCIe switching chip, not the Pericom 608GP.  Looks like that's the difference between the board with timeouts vs the one without.

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                              • E
                                endy66
                                last edited by Mar 22, 2016, 6:50 AM

                                Ok that makes sense, thank you for the clarification.

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                                • N
                                  nib01
                                  last edited by Mar 31, 2016, 12:40 AM

                                  As I'm reading all the comments here in this thread, am becoming more and more confused as time goes on.

                                  Between the two boards X11SBA-LN4F vs A1SRi-2558F, please give your final thoughts. Quick assist and AES-NI is a must, and this will be deplolyed on small lab/office (Plex, NAS, 5x AP, VMwares, 5x PCs, 5x wireless devices, etc).

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                                  • ?
                                    Guest
                                    last edited by Mar 31, 2016, 2:50 AM

                                    Between the two boards X11SBA-LN4F vs A1SRi-2558F, please give your final thoughts.

                                    Take a SG-4860, SG-8860 or XG-2758 1U & mSATA and thats it.

                                    Quick assist and AES-NI is a must,

                                    AES-NI is still working and Intel QuickAssist is coming in 2016 as it is known until today.

                                    • Link1
                                    • Link2

                                    and this will be deplolyed on small lab/office (Plex, NAS, 5x AP, VMwares, 5x PCs, 5x wireless devices, etc).

                                    It is all about what functions, options, services will be used or offered and which packets will be installed
                                    and what Internet connection speed is in usage. Also a smaller office with the need of a real UTM device
                                    will be on the need of much more power then pfSense as a pure firewall and the captive portal is. And
                                    on top of this there are many other points that would be jumping in on top of this, likes perhaps if the
                                    DMZ and LAN switch are capable of 10 GbE or are sorted with SFP+ ports you would perhaps more lucky
                                    with the XG-2758 1U rack mount version only as an example. But for Internet speed under 1 GBit/s and
                                    pfSense as a pure firewall only the SG-2440 would perhaps enough. Who knows, tell us more about your
                                    use case please.

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                                    • R
                                      RAND0M1ZER
                                      last edited by Apr 2, 2016, 3:41 PM

                                      Has anyone having the watchdog time out problem been able to resolve it by updating the BIOS or firmware?

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                                      • O
                                        OLBaID
                                        last edited by May 2, 2016, 10:09 PM

                                        Bumping this thread.

                                        Just bought a SM SuperServer E200-9B. Added Kingston 120gb ssd and 8gb of crucial 1333 SODIMM.

                                        Currently I am getting Watchdog timeouts on the LAN (IGB1) interface. I am watching the new 2.3 thread here:

                                        https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=110710.15

                                        Possible root cause:
                                        It seems like it might be specific to SMP (>1 CPU core)

                                        i did find older post on watchdog timeouts:

                                        https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Disable_ACPI

                                        Now I have found this thread. The SuperServer E200-9B is currently using 3.2.1 PFsense. Bios revision is 1.0 (there is a 1.0b - but no changelog information i can find). IMPI firmware is 00.55 (newest).

                                        I do have some fallback ALIX boards in use previously but I am concerned that the SM SuperServer E200-9B Pericom 608GP is the issue here. The previous post on RMA do show an EEPROM Firmware update of the NIC:

                                        quote author=ldean link=topic=98230.msg594532#msg594532 date=1455223690]
                                        Just wanted to update the thread.  We received our box back from supermicro yesterday and will be installing it into production tomorrow.  The repair report is somewhat vague about what they changed, but maybe it makes more sense to someone else:

                                        Customer Reported Symptoms:
                                        Watchdog timeout on ethernet ports.  Per TS, need ECO 18137
                                        
                                        Test result notes and repair:
                                        REPORTED PROBLEM FOUND.  WATCHDOG TIMEOUTS ON ETHERNET PORTS.  M/B HW ECO COMPLETED BY REWORK.  M/B BIOS, IPMI FW UPDATED TO CURRENT REVISION DONE.  CPU, DIMM SLOT DETECTION VERIFIED.  NIC PORT, USB PORT, IPMI CONNECTION TEST PASS.  NIC PORT LAN EEPROM FW UPDATED TO CURRENT REVISION COMPLETE.  NIC PORT PASSED OVERNIGHT PING TEST.  COM PORT CONNECTION VERIFIED.  SYSTEM HARDWARE FUNCTIONAL TEST PASS.  ECO VERIFIED.  ALL M/B SCREWS CHECKED.  TEST PASSED.
                                        

                                        I'm not too sure what the ECO refers to.  Anyone have an idea?

                                        https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/42296/SMSSE200-9B%20block.JPG

                                        My Question is this hardware or PFsense 2.3 related (as others are experiencing the issue as well)? I have no issue to RMA this board back (although i really like it beyond this watchdog issue).

                                        Any response is appreciated.

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                                        • E
                                          Engineer
                                          last edited by May 7, 2016, 2:14 AM May 7, 2016, 2:09 AM

                                          The board, since repair (modification?), has been running for 120 days now.  No issues.

                                          Much, much better.

                                          @OLBaID - the watchdog timeouts are a hardware issue.  SM made an unknown modification on my board to eliminate the watchdog timeouts.  Seems related to the PCIe switching chip (the first Ethernet port is attached directly to the PCIe bus of the N3700 while the other ports go through a port switching chip.  Those three ports all have watchdog timeout issues).

                                          There's quite a bit of information in this thread including the contact (Ken Huang IIRC) that has experience in this issue.

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