Rpi zero usb ethernet to pfsense

xbipin

even if i use a ppp or serial connection etc i still need to initially create a interface in pfsense right? rpi can also emulate serial so in that case also a virtual com port will appear in pfsense to which i need to assign a interface then bridge to lan.

usb Ethernet mode would be better i guess compared to serial

xbipin

the last option being connecting a wifi dongle to the rpi but i have tried that and it lags thats y i was trying this USB Ethernet method

stephenw10

You could potentially create a PPP connection via the virtual com port and then assign that. pfSense can cope with that disappearing since that's how many (now older) 3g devices appear.

A real USB/Ethernet adapter connected to the Pi would probably be better than USB wifi or emulated USB ethernet.

Steve

johnpoz

Why don't you just buy a dongle for the pi zero. I don't recall the one I got off the top of my head for mine.. But will take a look at it when get home.. I currently do not have it connected to anything or would look remotely.. But my zero is currently sitting in a cup on my desk at home ;) I needed its sd card for something else and have not gotten around to replacing and bringing it back up ;)

I will look in my my amazon orders to see if I can find out… BRB

edit: found it
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00RM3KXAU
Plugable USB 2.0 OTG Micro-B to 10/100 Fast Ethernet Adapter for Windows Tablets & Raspberry Pi Zero (ASIX AX88772A chipset)

stephenw10

Yup. That. ^

I mean it's probably less fun…. but it will work much better!

Steve

xbipin

Well to my testing the emulated Ethernet is very reliable so far, gives good speeds compared to a actual USB Ethernet adapter, btw I have a rpi zero w with built-in Wi-Fi but the drivers are a bit broken on it and I have reported it to the devs so till they fix I was trying this fun thing. The wifi drivers for the built-in Wi-Fi chip give inconsistent ping and network speeds and I need to run freeswitch on this for a project, a USB wifi dongle performs much better but I wanted to try this emulated Ethernet and it's good and gives almost no lag in calls through freeswitch.

johnpoz

Sounds great - could you provide some sort of guide or howto on how you got this up and running.. Be willing to give it a go on my pi zero..

xbipin

sure, give me some time till i write down all the steps, will post it here soon

xbipin

here r the steps but i have a few issues which i will mention below but for a start to configure the rpi zero as a RNDIS gadget using the otg port do the following:

in the /boot/config.txt add the below

dtoverlay=dwc2

in the /boot/cmdline.txt add the below after the part it says rootwait

modules-load=dwc2,g_ether g_ether.dev_addr=8e:7a:7e:37:6f:bb  g_ether.host_addr=8e:7a:7e:37:6f:aa

the first problem im facing is it assigns the proper mac id to itself but the host mac id doesnt apply when connecting this to pfsense but it does when connecting to a windows machine so this causes pfsense to always see this device changing mac ids when the rpi reboots

then what i did was assign this adapter in interfaces to opt1 and enabled it with ip set to none and later bridged it to LAN and under rules added a UDP pass rule for DHCP to pass through.

the second issue is the rpi still isnt taking a ip from dhcp on LAN, i tried setting a static ip but still from LAN i cant ping it nor the rpi can ping anything on LAN

xbipin

regarding pfsense not reading the actual mac that the rndis gadget supplies i was told on the rpi firmware github page to use g_ether.use_eem=0 but that too also doesnt work, on researching a bit found out its a driver issue in freebsd and quiet a few discussion on it already

xbipin

regarding freebsd not reading mac id the devs there provided a patch to test but i have no clue on how to integrate it into pfsense, can some1 provide some help

https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=220852

stephenw10

You would need to recompile the urndis module in FreeBSD and import it again to test in pfSense. Though you could test in FreeBSD directly instead.

I find it interesting that your device appears to be using the cdce driver. Connecting my Nexus 4 in a similar way gives log messages:

Apr 14 22:00:02 	kernel 		ugen0.4: <lge>at usbus0 (disconnected)
Apr 14 22:00:02 	kernel 		ugen0.4: <lge>at usbus0
Apr 14 22:00:02 	kernel 		urndis0: <rndis communications="" control="">on usbus0
Apr 14 22:00:02 	kernel 		ue0: <usb ethernet="">on urndis0
Apr 14 22:00:02 	kernel 		ue0: Ethernet address: 4a:aa:0d:9a:9b:59</usb></rndis></lge></lge>

Steve

xbipin

Well this is raspberry pi so maybe the code is different to Nexus 4.

I can try it in freebsd directly but that patch provided isn't in the release so how do I add that and recompile and test, any guide would be helpful as I'm a beginner to this.

stephenw10

It's been a while but as I recall it should be pretty straight forward.

Bring up a FreeBSD 10.3 VM (or a real machine, whatever) and include the source code during the install.

Edit the five lines into the code at /usr/src/sys/dev/usb/net/if_urndis.c. It's only 5 lines so you can probably just edit them in manually or fetch and merge the .diff file.

Then go to: /usr/src/sys/modules/usb/urndis and run: make

The new modules should appear in that folder. You can sftp it out and into pfSense as you did with the original module.

Steve

xbipin

thanks for the help, which location do i copy this module in pfsense or do i need to copy anywhere and add an entry to load it on boot?

xbipin

i loaded up freebsd 11 in VM then added the patch and compiled and the resulting if_rndis.ko file i copied over to pfsense and loaded it on boot using the loader.conf file but im still seeing the same behavior

Enter an option: ugen0.2: <linux 4.9.37+="" with="" 20980000.usb=""> at usbus0
cdce0: <rndis communications="" control=""> on usbus0
cdce0: No valid alternate setting found
device_attach: cdce0 attach returned 6
cdce0: <rndis ethernet="" data=""> on usbus0
cdce0: faking MAC address
ue0: <usb ethernet=""> on cdce0
ue0: Ethernet address: 2a:c9:1a:f8:7f:00</usb></rndis></rndis></linux>

to check if the module i loaded from pfsense shell i typed kldload /boot/modules/if_urndis.ko and it says

kldload: can't load /boot/modules/if_urndis.ko: module already loaded or in kern
el

so im a bit confused if my compiled ko is being used or the in kernel one in pfsense, if u think the above is correct shall i report it to the dev on freebsd that the patch doesnt work?

stephenw10

The if_urnidis kernel module is not included with pfSense either in the kernel or as a loadable module so if you are seeing that it means you have copied it across to the correct place (/boot/modules) and loaded it correctly at boot time with a line in loader.conf.local.

If that was the module created with the patched code rather than whatever you had there before then it looks like the patch did not work.

It still concerns me that the device created is cdce0 and not urndis0. It looks to me as though it's not even using the urndis driver. What happens if you remove the module entirely and boot without it?

Steve

xbipin

i have no other module installed, as per ur instructions i added that patch and ran make and it gave me this id_urndis.ko file which i copied over to pfsense and loaded it at boot.

do u mean remove the rpi and boot pfsense, its same if i plug rpi when pfsense is running or keep rpi running and boot pfsense. the usbconfig etc commands give same output with and without the if_urndis.ko file loaded.

i updated the thread at freebsd bugzilla, ill mentioned ur point about its not using the rndis driver there

stephenw10

Ah, well if it does the same thing without any urndis module present then clearly it's not using that at all just the cdce driver which is in kernel in pfSense.

So patching urndis ain't gonna do anything. ;)

I've seen exactly that same issue with cdce.

Wow, long time ago! https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=26563.0

No change. ::)

Steve

xbipin

yes i read that thread sometime back but is there any way to load the urndis driver and make the kernel use that?