Gigabyte H170N WiFi LGA1151 DDR4 mITX (Dual Intel GbE LAN)

Tantamount

So which one should I plug in the WAN and the LAN into?

What would be more advantageous and why?

According to this site the older 2011 took up 2% more cpu and was a tiny bit slower.
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2015/08/13/asus_z170_deluxe_lga_1151_motherboard_review/4

For that reason I'd put the 2011 on the wan since that's likely going to be the slower connection.

MikeV7896

@Tantamount:

Isn't 2.3 running a newer version of FreeBSD? I don't think the driver will be compatible with FreeBSD 10.1.

pfSense 2.3 is running the current FreeBSD 10.3 build, which like pfSense 2.3 is not in final release yet. FreeBSD just recently updated the igb and em drivers for Intel NICs in 10.3, and those changes were brought over to pfSense 2.3 a couple of days later.

Guest

BlueKobold,

Isn't 2.3 running a newer version of FreeBSD? I don't think the driver will be compatible with FreeBSD 10.1.

You bought hardware that isn´t supported by a porper driver in the actual stable pfSense but in an upcoming
version this driver is inserted and installed, so you could do now the following two things in my eyes;

wait until the version 2.3 is stable
go with the latest snapshot of pfSense version 2.3

Tantamount

@JeronimoColon:

I believe the reason why the custom compiled driver doesn't work is because pfSense believe the driver is already loaded. When I try to manually load the driver with kldload it I get:

module_register: module pci/em already exists!
Module pci/em failed to register: 17
module_register: module pci/lem already exists!
Module pci/lem failed to register: 17
kldload: can't load /boot/modules/if_em.ko: module already loaded or in kernel

I have no idea where it's loading the older driver from. As far as I can tell the older driver is not in /boot/kernel or /boot/modules - but I could be wrong (i.e., it has a different file name). I'm hopeful that I can get the new driver to work if I can figure out what's loading the outdated "em" driver and override/remove/disable it in favor of the newly compiled version.

Any thoughts?

I did some more digging on this. Apparently the old em driver is part of the generic kernel – it's not a module.

If you run 'kldstat' you'll see the kernel and any loaded modules. No em right?

now run kldstat -v
This will list all the modules that are inside the kernel.
you'll see there's pci/em and pci/lem
kldunload cannot unload these.

A solution then is to recompile the kernel with a config that disables the em that comes with it so that we can load the module, or, perhaps, replace the em code in the kernel from that from Intel and have it included in the kernel.

Or is there a boot option that can ask the kernel not to load the em driver it has?

Tantamount

@Tantamount:

A solution then is to recompile the kernel with a config that disables the em that comes with it so that we can load the module, or, perhaps, replace the em code in the kernel from that from Intel and have it included in the kernel.

Okay, I can confirm this works.

Love.IT.Again

I just want to know the power consumption of this set-up or similar Skylake mini-ITX built? Thanks.

hardsense

Hi,

Same mobo with i3-6100 + 8G RAM + Samsung SSD + Intel NIC on PCIe + 2x 120mm fan on pfsense 2.2.6

40w ~ idle
50w~54w-55w on my use ( router + firewall + snort with all rules turned on , on both interfaces but mind you I'm new user of pfSense , just started ).

It's really slow to install pfSense 2.2.6 with this mobo and also little bit slow to load after install compared to my previous box with first gen core2duo E6320,4G RAM.

weird message during install -> /boot/kernel/kernel text=0x1223e30 data=0x881b00+0x3576a0 syms=[0x8+0x16f050+0x8+0x16c491]

15 min to generate -> data=0x881b00+0x3576a0
another 15 min or so to generate -> syms=[0x8+0x16f050+0x8+0x16c491].

p.s sorry for my bad English and also this is my first UEFI bios mobo so I didn't touch the BIOS at all.

IIMacGyverII

Yeah it takes awhile to load the install of pfsense on this board. Not sure why, perhaps USB drivers? I tried the USB 2.0 and the 3.0s but it was the same loading time but I bet a sata cd-rom would work normally.

bolhaskutya

Is there a way to get the wireless card working? It doesn't appear to be recognized.

xman111

Hey guys, just got this motherboard installed. I have a dual Intel pice card as well. when I boot up, only the two nics on my add in card are available, nothing from the motherboard. any ideas? everything is enabled
in the bios.

A Former User

Hi all -

Can anyone post i3 or i5 benchmarks with this board? I'm working on a new build to support up to 1G WAN speeds with PfBlocker and Snort, with occasional remote access VPN usage. Any power usage stats or general experience notes with this motherboard would help too.

Paint

Does anyone have a FreeBSD compile environment available?

Can someone please compile the new Intel Network Adapter Driver v7.6.2 for amd64? :D :D :D :D

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/17509/Intel-Network-Adapter-Gigabit-Base-Driver-for-FreeBSD-

Thanks!

tucansam

I have this exact motherboard with a Skylake Celeron.

I got the latest snapshot from here:

http://snapshots.pfsense.org/amd64/pfSense_RELENG_2_3/installer/?C=M;O=D

and the second NIC is not recognized.

Then I downloaded the compiled driver and followed the instructions from the first page, from the gentleman who was kind enough to post a step-by-step at the very bottom of the page.

Still does not work.

Only have one NIC recognized despite best efforts. Both NICs are enabled in the BIOS.

Any other suggestions most welcome.

–

EDIT

I installed 2.4 from here

http://snapshots.pfsense.org/amd64/pfSense_master/installer/?C=M;O=D

on a whim. I will say that it boot and loads tens of times faster, if not more, than 2.3. But the second NIC still doesn't work.

tucansam

I am in the process of installing FreeBSD 10.3 in a VM on a spare server, hoping to be able to compile the driver myself, although its been a long time since I've done such a thing. If that doesn't work, I guess I'll install FreeBSD 10.3 on the actual system itself that I intend to run pf on, and see if I can do it there.

tucansam

Well, I compiled from the source from Intel's site in a 10.3 VM, loaded it into pfsense, and get this in dmesg:

module_register: cannot register pci/em from kernel; already loaded from if_em.ko
Module pci/em failed to register: 17
module_register: cannot register pci/lem from kernel; already loaded from if_em.ko
Module pci/lem failed to register: 17

At this point I am at a loss and have no idea how to proceed.

Any advice welcome.

tucansam

ipfire works fine, sees both NICs.

xman111

I have this board with an addon quad intel nic and all ports work since 2.3

tucansam

@xman111:

I have this board with an addon quad intel nic and all ports work since 2.3

Thanks. I have this working just fine with ipfire, but pfsense is a no go. I'm at a total loss as to why.

xman111

that is weird. I know the one network card wasn't supported pre 2.3 but ever since that upgrade, it has worked flawlessly.

tucansam

@xman111:

that is weird. I know the one network card wasn't supported pre 2.3 but ever since that upgrade, it has worked flawlessly.

Yeah, I am also posting in the other thread (sorry to the mods) and I am using the latest BIOS version for the motherboard. No idea why pf won't work but ipfire does.