Intel Atom C2xxx LPC failures

[severach]

No cold spares for me. Unlike most products pfSense runs on any computer in the junk box and 4 port Intel cards are dime-a-dozen. I tested the config copy tonight to make sure it works.

Like they say in Aladdin: We all got cold spares!

[dopey]

In case anyone else has a supermicro board and wondered how this works I just asked them today:

"I'm inquiring about the currently known Intel C2000 cpu problem where the processor may fail unexpectedly over time. What are my options if I have an impacted motherboard?"

And this was the response i got less than an hour later:

"Thanks for contacting us regarding the Atom C2000.

You may submit a RMA at the following link to have the concerned issues addressed.  You may request the board to be cross-shipped during the RMA submission process.

https://www.supermicro.com/support/rma/"

[garyd9]

@dopey:

You may request the board to be cross-shipped during the RMA submission process.

Yeah, you can request it.  Heh.  Unless you purchased the board directly from supermicro and it's within 90 days, they'll likely deny the request.

If they are doing it differently for this specific issue, PLEASE let me know.  When I called them, I was told that I had no options for cross shipping as it's been 6 months since I purchased (and because I purchased from Amazon.com.)

I just moved pfsense to a VM and submitted my RMA request this evening.

[dopey]

the RMA person rejected the cross-shipping.  I ordered my motherboard august 2015.

I responded with this:

This was the response i received from technical support regarding my inquiry:
Thanks for contacting us regarding the Atom C2000.

You may submit a RMA at the following link to have the concerned issues addressed.  You may request the board to be cross-shipped during the RMA submission process.

https://www.supermicro.com/support/rma/

They told me I may request cross-ship.

I was under the impression that the intel C2000 flaw couldn't be repaired and needed to be replaced.  My motherboard is still functioning but it's a critical piece of equipment for me (my router) and the downtime would be very inconvenient.

And an hour later I got my cross-ship RMA form :)

[pfcode]

Hmmm, I submitted the RMA form,  but hours later, I got response: "This request only qualifies for repair service", ????

[dopey]

Try pushing back like I did.  It seemed to work :)

[pfcode]

@dopey:

Try pushing back like I did.  It seemed to work :)

Thanks. I got the cross shipment Agreement form.

[garyd9]

Can you please share how you're pushing back?  I have an approved RMA for repair… but the turn around time is going to be significant for me..  (Just the 2 way shipping time will be 3 weeks total.)

[doktornotor]

@garyd9:

Can you please share how you're pushing back?

[dopey]

@garyd9: this was my post with a cut and paste of my exact email response when they rejected my cross-ship :)

@dopey:

the RMA person rejected the cross-shipping.  I ordered my motherboard august 2015.

I responded with this:

This was the response i received from technical support regarding my inquiry:
Thanks for contacting us regarding the Atom C2000.

You may submit a RMA at the following link to have the concerned issues addressed.  You may request the board to be cross-shipped during the RMA submission process.

https://www.supermicro.com/support/rma/

They told me I may request cross-ship.

I was under the impression that the intel C2000 flaw couldn't be repaired and needed to be replaced.  My motherboard is still functioning but it's a critical piece of equipment for me (my router) and the downtime would be very inconvenient.

And an hour later I got my cross-ship RMA form :)

[garyd9]

I begged.  It worked.  So, I'll get the replacement board in a few days instead of having to wait a month for roundtrip shipping and repair.

Thank you, SuperMicro, for preemptively replacing a board that MIGHT break in the next 3 years without forcing me to wait until it's broken before addressing it.

The irony is that I've already relocated pfsense to a VM in preparation of a long shipping/repair cycle.  Well, I'll be glad to get the critical router back to dedicated hardware.  It's also good to know that I CAN (if needed) relocate router functions to hyper-v.  (Though it's not quite as easy as I expected due to different interface naming.)

[Derelict]

'll be glad to get the critical router back to dedicated hardware.

If it is critical you should have at least two.

[garyd9]

@Derelict:

If it is critical you should have at least two.

True…  Of course, "critical" in this particular instance is because when the router goes down, my wife/kids whine.  So, probably "critical" might be too strong of a term.

At least the experience has taught me how to get the router working in a VM in case I ever have issues again.  I guess what I need to learn is how to set up a VM so that it can more easily take over the router functions without my having to manually edit config.xml files (to change interface names from igbX to hnX) and then manually restore them.  (I'd still have to manually move the WAN ethernet cable... I think.)

[dennypage]

@garyd9:

True…  Of course, "critical" in this particular instance is because when the router goes down, my wife/kids whine.  So, probably "critical" might be too strong of a term.

When my wife is upset, it's critical to me. That's why I have a spare SG-4860.

:)

[whosmatt]

@garyd9:

At least the experience has taught me how to get the router working in a VM in case I ever have issues again.  I guess what I need to learn is how to set up a VM so that it can more easily take over the router functions without my having to manually edit config.xml files (to change interface names from igbX to hnX) and then manually restore them.  (I'd still have to manually move the WAN ethernet cable… I think.)

CARP and the redundancy features in pfSense work wonderfully for this… provided you have at least three static IP addresses on your WAN... probably you don't on a standard residential connection.  Otherwise, a simple nightly config backup and something like sed will easily provide you with a ready-to-go config file for your backup router (if the hardware is different).  Otherwise just the backup is fine.

[gcu_greyarea]

@Derelict:

'll be glad to get the critical router back to dedicated hardware.

If it is critical you should have at least two.

That's perfect valid point for an enterprise environment.

The SG-2440 is advertised and targeted at:

https://store.pfsense.org/SG-2440/

Small Businesses
Small to Medium Sized Business Networks
Small to Medium Sized Branch Office
Managed Service Provider / Managed Security Service Provider (MSP/MSSP) On Premise Appliance
Teleworkers needing an "Always-Up" network or VPN connections

I fail to see why a small branch office should have a HA Router Setup.

An then there are claims about:
"No moving parts to wear out. This system is designed for a long deployment lifetime."

That should read: "This system is designed for a long deployment lifetime with increased likely hood of failure after 18 months and almost certain failure after 3 years"

Would anyone here purchase a second car - just because the car manufacturer refuses to fix a faulty engine component???

An HA setup is system architecture.

Not fixing a known issue is neglecting customers.

If driving is critical to you - just buy two cars?

[dopey]

Yeah. critical for those of us geeks that have pfsense at home is different than critical for the enterprise :)

My backup plan for my critical piece of equipment is to pull out my old dd-wrt router that's still configured to properly work with about 2/3rds of my stuff, and stick it in place until I can fix my pfsense router :)

Sure, at that point, I'm limited to 200-300mbit/s speeds but I can live with that and I'm sure my wife and kids would never notice :)

As long as they can get to their netflix and local plex server, and I can vpn to work, we're all happy.

[VAMike]

@gcu_greyarea:

I fail to see why a small branch office should have a HA Router Setup.

Because it's an incredibly cheap way to ensure that an office full of people doesn't go idle because there's a network problem. I'd also recommend a backup internet connection if it's at all possible. I guess if salaries are really low in your area then the extra couple hundred bucks isn't worth it, but in most places nowadays a day without internet is going to cause a lot more than a couple hundred bucks worth of loss.

You seem to think that the C2xxx errata is the only thing that can possibly go wrong with a firewall, but most people would be sad if their office went offline for some period of time because (to use an example I've seen personally) their $5 wall wart failed. An HA configuration prevents multiple failure modes.

[gcu_greyarea]

Of course, there are many things that possibly can and will go wrong.
That's why you'd address the obvious and known issues first.

Looks like the C3000 has been announced…. which will most likely replace my C2000 kit. I'm sure the C3000 will have its own quirks, but hopefully intel learned from the clock issue.

I wouldn't want a "reworked" C2000 board anyway (if the soldering is done by a human).
Preference would be the intel fix - or - an entirely new CPU (i.e. C3000)

I decided that next time I will "Roll my Own" Hardware, so that I can blame myself if anything goes wrong. I still like the fanless ADI/Netgate kit, but I lost confidence in the company.

The advantage of the Netgate appliances is that they have no moving parts, don't require assembly and can be deployed quickly. But they are certainly not really that cheap, considering you can get more powerful hardware for the same money.
And despite the generous warranty extension I do not like the fact that Netgate won't proactively replace the systems for affected customers.
Let alone - continues to sell faulty units.

[Derelict]

Wasn't necessarily talking about HA but, since the term critical was used in the context of the unlikely event of an LPC component issue, there should be at least a spare on the shelf. If it's a critical router.