Barracuda 310 NICs

thcassio · Mar 29, 2016, 2:31 PM

Hi guys, nice piece of software there, but I just made a jumper on the parallel port wiring that activates / deactivates the the 2 frontal ports, no software interaction is needed and now they stay active all the time. I can post pictures if anyone is interested in doing so, it's really easy.

I really don't care for the lights so all is fine now, pfSense running with 80MBPS throughput on Barracuda 410 Web Filter (Sempron 3200 + 1Gb RAM)

I also replaced the HDD disk with a diskonchip IDE module, so I disabled that annoying loud fan next to the HDD, which probably saves a lot of energy and ear capillaries…

I was wondering if those realtek network cards could be replaced with gigabit low profile cards to allow better throughputs, this device has odd ethernet cables wiring running inside it coming from the rear of those cards..

w3bghost · Apr 10, 2016, 2:26 PM

@thcassio:

Hi guys, nice piece of software there, but I just made a jumper on the parallel port wiring that activates / deactivates the the 2 frontal ports, no software interaction is needed and now they stay active all the time. I can post pictures if anyone is interested in doing so, it's really easy.

I really don't care for the lights so all is fine now, pfSense running with 80MBPS throughput on Barracuda 410 Web Filter (Sempron 3200 + 1Gb RAM)

I also replaced the HDD disk with a diskonchip IDE module, so I disabled that annoying loud fan next to the HDD, which probably saves a lot of energy and ear capillaries…

I was wondering if those realtek network cards could be replaced with gigabit low profile cards to allow better throughputs, this device has odd ethernet cables wiring running inside it coming from the rear of those cards..

I would like to know. I am repurposing a 410 web filter also with pfsense.

thcassio · Apr 12, 2016, 3:02 PM

@w3bghost:

@thcassio:

Hi guys, nice piece of software there, but I just made a jumper on the parallel port wiring that activates / deactivates the the 2 frontal ports, no software interaction is needed and now they stay active all the time. I can post pictures if anyone is interested in doing so, it's really easy.

I really don't care for the lights so all is fine now, pfSense running with 80MBPS throughput on Barracuda 410 Web Filter (Sempron 3200 + 1Gb RAM)

I also replaced the HDD disk with a diskonchip IDE module, so I disabled that annoying loud fan next to the HDD, which probably saves a lot of energy and ear capillaries…

I was wondering if those realtek network cards could be replaced with gigabit low profile cards to allow better throughputs, this device has odd ethernet cables wiring running inside it coming from the rear of those cards..

I would like to know. I am repurposing a 410 web filter also with pfsense.

It's the two wires that comes out from the parallel port and connects to the frontal network daughterboard, just remove the connector and place a jumper where they go connected to.

Please give it a try, leave me a message if you can't find it and I'll open up the server and take some pictures.

Regards

Cassio

firefox · Aug 26, 2016, 1:01 PM

i have the same problem
the front connections do not respond

It's the two wires that comes out from the parallel port and connects to the frontal network daughterboard, just remove the connector and place a jumper where they go connected to.

Please give it a try, leave me a message if you can't find it and I'll open up the server and take some pictures.

is it the two wires color Yellow and green ?

Just unplug them and put a jumper instead ?

stephenw10 · Nov 14, 2016, 11:46 AM

Very late reply here again. :-[

That looks to be wired identically to the first box we looked at. The BCHW program should work on that. If not it will be possible to probe the registers as we did originally.

The program may need re-compiling for 64bit but you can test a 32bit install to confirm it.

Steve

tsquareweb72 · Apr 2, 2018, 9:25 PM

I know this is an old post, but I am trying to get a Barracuda Webfilter 210 to work as a pfsense 2.4.3 64 bit.
I found writeio64 and readio64, which works for the lights (0x88, 0x48, 0x28), but the Nics don't turn on using 0x08.

I tried the BCHW32, but get "ELF interpreter /libexec/ld-elf.so.1 not found". I assume because I'm 64 bit and this is 32 bit.

stephenw10 · Apr 2, 2018, 10:44 PM

Does it look the same internally? Wired to the parallel port?

You're right that BCHW32 doesn't do anything more than writeio64 so if it doesn't work there you would need to investigate why not.

Steve

tsquareweb72 · Apr 3, 2018, 6:47 PM

The parallel port wires look exactly the same, I just have one card handling the two ports though.

To be honest, I don't really follow what the writeio64 is doing when you writeio 378 0x08 (0x28,0x48,0x88). Is that changing voltage on those pins to flip lights (and the relay) off/on? If so, I'll grab the volt meter and see what is going on. If not, what should I be looking for?

Thank you for any help in understanding this.

tsquareweb72 · Apr 3, 2018, 7:05 PM

Sorry…I just noticed the first picture showing the parallel port. I don't have the black and blue wire going to the NICs.

I guess that is why the lights work, but the NIC doesn't. The only wires on the PCI card are two sets of two going to the connectors at the front. I guess something in Barracuda's programming turns it on via the PCI board. There is a relay on the PCI board...looking into that.

stephenw10 · Apr 4, 2018, 12:06 AM

The parallel port pins are binary so you're turning them on or off by writing 1s or 0s to the appropriate input/output space.

The IO address is hex value 378. The parallel port actually has more pins than that so exists on 378, 379 and 37a but the pins addressed at 378 are what we''re interested in.

So when you write 0x08 to 378 you are setting that 8 bit values to hex 08 which is binary 0000 1000. So it set's bit 3 high. That enables the relay(s) on the other boards.

Similarly the oher values set the pins for the LEDs:

0x28 0010 1000
0x48 0100 1000
0x88 1000 1000

Can we see a photo of the board in the 210? It will be more difficult to find but may still be controllable. The parallel port is a classicly easy way to interface with hardware.

You might check the BIOS for bypass-lan settings if you can get into it.

Steve

tsquareweb72 · Apr 5, 2018, 9:43 PM

On the Webfilter 210 (at least my 4 year old version) four wires go from the parallel port to a board on the front where the LEDs are. The picture in the original post had two more wires going to the NIC card. I added a picture of the parallel port, the NIC card with all of the wires going to the front board with the two ports (no other wires connect to it…it only connects to the motherboard in a PCI slot) and lastly a picture of the BIOS under On board Device. I didn't see anything else the may "by-pass LAN" settings (but I might have missed it). The BIOS password is bcndk1

There is a jumper on the PCI board. When it is closed (how it was when I opened the case) the orange light is solid on when a cable is plugged in. If I take the jumper off (open) then nothing happens when a cable is plugged in.

stephenw10 · Apr 6, 2018, 10:33 PM

Hmm, OK I'm not sure that has LAN-bypass at all. That looks like just the magnetics, not a relay.

Which orange light are you referring to? The link LED? If that lights then there not any lan-bypass relays. That would prevent link at all as it disconnects the Ethernet port entirely.

How do the interfaces appear?

Do you see a link reported by 'ifconfig' when you connect a cable?

Edit: Yeah the 210 did not have LAN bypass. Looks like those might be rl NICs :(

Steve

tsquareweb72 · Apr 10, 2018, 1:33 PM

Yes, I was referring to the link LED. When using as the Barracuda Webfilter, both the WAN and LAN would stay orange until it completely booted up. Something in the programming had to turn it on. The pfsense doesn't see them at all. IFconfig only lists the on-board (back) NIC.

I gave up and bought a PCI ribbon cable and a two port PCI NIC. The NIC matches the spacing of the original port. Only one mounting ear matches, but that is enough to hold it in place.

Thanks for all of the help in trying to figure it out. BTW what is a rl NIC?

Stephen

Grimson · Apr 10, 2018, 1:51 PM

@tsquareweb72:

Thanks for all of the help in trying to figure it out. BTW what is a rl NIC?

A NIC that's using a chipset from Realtek, those are prone to cause problems as the FreeBSD driver and the hardware in itself aren't really good.

tsquareweb72 · Apr 10, 2018, 2:12 PM

The on-board NIC (in the back) is also a Realtek, but pfsense picks it up. I'm not disagreeing with you on Realtek not being good, but why would pfsense "see" one and not the other?

Is my assumption wrong about something in the Barracuda software "turning it on" during the boot process?

Grimson, I know you were probably just answering "what is a rl NIC" and why it may be the problem…it just made me wonder if I should stop researching how Barracuda is turning it on and resign to the fact that pfsense (FreeBSD) doesn't have drivers and that is why it isn't working. But then, why is the on-board Realtek recognized?

I did give up on getting it to work so it isn't a big deal, but I ask to satisfy my curiosity and in case another poor soul out there is trying the same thing.

Stephen

Grimson · Apr 10, 2018, 3:59 PM

Well you can check the dmesg output. If it's a missing driver it should at least show up as an unknown device.

tsquareweb72 · Apr 10, 2018, 8:32 PM

The joy of computers…I have been trying to get pfsense running on a Barracuda Spam filter 300 and this Barracuda Webfilter 210. I put the Webfilter to the side while waiting on the new NIC and PCI ribbon cable. When you gave me something else to try, I pulled the hard drive out of the Spam filter 300 (running pfsense 2.4.2) and put it in the Webfilter. I was lazy this time and didn't wipe and reinstall pfsense. It booted up after showing all the errors of missing and new parts...with all three Nics!
The front two and on-board all work!
Prior to posting on this forum, I loaded pfsense over a dozen times...the newest, older, 64bit and 32bit. Those front two ports never showed up! The only difference this time was it was preloaded on a different computer (I didn't expect it to work...just being lazy).

After the concern about Realtek vs Intel, I will probably keep the new Intel card I got and use it instead.

I wish I knew why it finally started working.

Thanks for all who helped and good luck to all who are trying this,

Stephen

stephenw10 · Apr 10, 2018, 9:25 PM

Hmm, that is odd. I would not expect 2.4.2 to have any greater or lesser ability to 'see' that hardware.

The NIC on the back, whilst also Realtek, is using the re(4) driver. The two front NICs use the rl(4) driver.

Both NICs suffer a poor reputation in pfSense/FreeBSD but the re NICs are in fact far better. The rl cards are a 100Mb NIC and were truly bad!

Consult the source:

@https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd/blob/9bf061d97597ae47d8b131fef6cafcfc9f5e23b3/sys/dev/rl/if_rl.c#L48:

The RealTek 8139 PCI NIC redefines the meaning of 'low end.' This is
probably the worst PCI ethernet controller ever made, with the possible
exception of the FEAST chip made by SMC.

But yeah they should appear all the time. There is no by-pass on the 210 so they are not enabled in any way by the Barracuda OS.

Steve

tsquareweb72 · Apr 10, 2018, 11:49 PM

I just figured out that the two front NICs were only 100Mb and came online to tell anyone else trying this not to bother…and your post confirmed my findings.

I have 200Mb download at my house and the front NIC only got 40Mb at best.

My PCI ribbon cable is coming in Thursday and I will test the dual Gigabit Intel card then.

Long story short, don't bother with the front NICs...replace them. This article is great for handling the lights on the front though.

Thanks again,

Stephen

nickdahat · Apr 30, 2018, 8:54 PM

@thcassio:

Hi guys, nice piece of software there, but I just made a jumper on the parallel port wiring that activates / deactivates the the 2 frontal ports, no software interaction is needed and now they stay active all the time. I can post pictures if anyone is interested in doing so, it's really easy.

I really don't care for the lights so all is fine now, pfSense running with 80MBPS throughput on Barracuda 410 Web Filter (Sempron 3200 + 1Gb RAM)

I also replaced the HDD disk with a diskonchip IDE module, so I disabled that annoying loud fan next to the HDD, which probably saves a lot of energy and ear capillaries…

I was wondering if those realtek network cards could be replaced with gigabit low profile cards to allow better throughputs, this device has odd ethernet cables wiring running inside it coming from the rear of those cards..

I'd like to see what that jumper looks like. And it works constantly? That's cool!