Official Realtek Driver Binary 1.95 For 2.4.4 Release

[coreybrett]

do you do this for better NIC performance?

[TheNarc]

I believe that it does increase performance, but primarily it's for stability. With the built-in driver you get watchdog timeout events under heavy load, so it's basically unusable.

[coreybrett]

what chipset? I have several realtek cards and have never noticed an issue

[TheNarc]

8111/8168 Family:
Realtek Driver Page

[coreybrett]

interesting, I guess I don't have enough load to trigger the issue

[coreybrett]

does it trigger a reboot or something?

[TheNarc]

Not an automatic reboot, but the NICs just stop working until you manually reboot. Typically you can provoke it with iperf testing.

[Love.IT.Again]

@TheNarc Thanks for the compiled driver. I will be using it with my resurrected C1323 box (currently running on 32GB USB thumb drive). But before patching the compiled driver, I have to try iperf if it can trigger the problem.

What I remember (a year ago), after updating pfsense to this box, I noticed that the ethernet slowly becoming unusable. it will be good again after a reboot, but it will go back to the same problem after several minutes.

Thanks again.

[TheNarc]

@love-it-again No problem, I'm glad to hear it's useful. I run two CI323-based pfSense boxes and your memory syncs with mine. Without the official Realtek driver, it will eventually get watchdog timeouts and the NICs go down until a reboot. I remember that being easy to trigger with iperf to stress them too. I haven't had any issues since using the official driver though.

[breakaway]

I’ve just (in the last 2 days) applied this patch to two pfSense machines. One is a Intel N3150-based machine with dual Realtek NICs and another is a Intel J1800 with dual Realtek NICs.

Both used to crash and go unresponsive a lot since upgrading to 2.4.4 but now they’ve been up for over 24 hours. One has been syncing off-site backups for over 12 hours at 600 mbps over our 1gbps symmetric fiber internet connection, no issue.

[lovingHDTV]

How do I update my Pfsense box with this driver?

Do I just copy it to /boot/kernel?

thanks
david

[breakaway]

@lovinghdtv

Unzip & Place "if_re.ko" file at "/boot/kernel"

Change ownership and permissions on the if_re.ko file

chown root:wheel if_re.ko
chmod 0555 if_re.ko

Then edit "/boot/loader.conf” to add this line:

if_re_load=“YES”

Reboot.

Then go to diagnostics > command prompt in the WebGUI

Run the command

kldstat

If you did everything properly you’ll see “if_re.ko” in the list that comes up. If not, the driver isn’t loaded.

[lovingHDTV]

@breakaway said in Official Realtek Driver Binary 1.95 For 2.4.4 Release:

@lovinghdtv

Unzip & Place "if_re.ko" file at "/boot/kernel"

Change ownership and permissions on the if_re.ko file

chown root:wheel if_re.ko
chmod 0555 if_re.ko

Then edit "/boot/loader.conf” to add this line:

if_re_load=“YES"

Reboot.

Then go to diagnostics > command prompt in the WebGUI

Run the command

kldstat

If you did everything properly you’ll see “if_re.ko” in the list that comes up. If not, the driver isn’t loaded.

Thanks that worked like a charm.

Now hopefully it fixed my issue.

david

[Derelict]

I would put it in /boot/loader.conf.local

[Napsterbater]

@breakaway said in Official Realtek Driver Binary 1.95 For 2.4.4 Release:

@lovinghdtv

Unzip & Place "if_re.ko" file at "/boot/kernel"

Change ownership and permissions on the if_re.ko file

chown root:wheel if_re.ko
chmod 0555 if_re.ko

Then edit "/boot/loader.conf” to add this line:

if_re_load=“YES"

Reboot.

Then go to diagnostics > command prompt in the WebGUI

Run the command

kldstat

If you did everything properly you’ll see “if_re.ko” in the list that comes up. If not, the driver isn’t loaded.

Tip for anyone having a issue, If you copied and pasted the if_re_load=“YES" line fix the first “ and make it " yes there is a difference. /facedesk

Works like a charm, once I found that =P

Thanks for the updated driver and taking the time to compile, I have a ZOTAC ZBOX CI323 Nano with dual Realtek and a 2nd Generic system with a single Realtek (router on a Stick).

[breakaway]

Odd - looks like the double quotes are messed up. You can thank my Phone for that! I’ll update it.

Always use kldstat to verify if the driver if_re.ko is loaded!

Shell Output - cat /boot/loader.conf

kern.cam.boot_delay=10000
kern.ipc.nmbclusters="1000000"
kern.ipc.nmbjumbop="524288"
kern.ipc.nmbjumbo9="524288"
kern.geom.label.disk_ident.enable="0"
kern.geom.label.gptid.enable="0"
zfs_load="YES"
if_re_load=“YES”
autoboot_delay="3"
hw.usb.no_pf="1”

Shell Output - kldstat

Id Refs Address Size Name
1 20 0xffffffff80200000 2d9a7d0 kernel
2 1 0xffffffff82f9c000 381f00 zfs.ko
3 2 0xffffffff8331e000 a3a0 opensolaris.ko
4 1 0xffffffff83329000 7d2c0 if_re.ko
5 1 0xffffffff83911000 10a0 cpuctl.ko
6 1 0xffffffff83913000 2ec0 cryptodev.ko
7 1 0xffffffff83916000 c80 coretemp.ko

[Napsterbater]

@breakaway upper case is fine, it is the left/backwards/upside down quotation mark that if copy pasted makes the loader throw a syntax error and not load the driver.

[penetal]

Could you post a guide on how to compile the driver? Would be nice to know what is needed from pfsense sources etc and if any configs is needed.

[Love.IT.Again]

@penetal

Here's a link of the guide. The files are a little bit old so use the newer version (Realtek driver v1.95 and FreeBSD 11.2), but the process is still the same.

https://gist.github.com/jovimon/524e116471f249626fd2ccd141f3fe05

[breakaway]

Also, is there any way to “slipstream” the driver and the modification to the loader.conf so that it will automatically include this driver when installing from media?