Official Realtek Driver Binary 1.95 For 2.4.4 Release

TheNarc · Jan 14, 2019, 3:20 PM

Also, at least in my experience using the driver built in to FreeBSD, the watchdog timeout is pretty easy to provoke by running iperf tests against the LAN interface. I see that the Odroid H2 has dual RTL8111Gs whereas I, and I believe most others using the official Realtek driver, have been running Zotac machines that I believe have RTL8111Es. Both of those use the same driver, but I think it's fair to say that the RTL8111G is less "battle tested" with this driver. Have you also confirmed that the driver is indeed being loaded and used by looking for it in the output of ldstat?

fkoczan · Mar 15, 2019, 7:45 PM

I have made FreeBSD 12 package.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ch4Z_w7gpbrpavQ4KhPUXUzYhRyzqnye/view?usp=sharing
I dont consider it my work - I have just packed it in one archive. It is stable for me on 12.0 p3 more than
"sed -i -e 's/TAILQ_FOREACH/CK_STAILQ_FOREACH/g' if_re.c"

coreybrett · Mar 18, 2019, 5:40 PM

Will pfSense 2.5.0 / FreeBSD 12.0-RELEASE-p3 improve the built-in Realtek drivers situation at all?

stephenw10 · Mar 18, 2019, 6:11 PM

I would guess no. Not much activity in the FreeBSD repo:
https://github.com/pfsense/FreeBSD-src/commits/RELENG_2_5/sys/dev/re

AntonTo · Mar 26, 2019, 3:02 PM

I've installed precomplied version of this driver for Nettop Gigabyte GB-BACE-3000 - working good with PFSence 2.4.4-RELEASE-p1. Uptime 31 days.
Thanks for the driver @TheNarc!

mervincm · Mar 26, 2019, 3:02 PM

I am currently using a Gigabyte GA-C1007UN-D
It has two realtek NICS either RTL8111E or RTL811F (online reviews conflict) I have never noticed this error, but would use this driver if it would increase stability. using the current 2.4.5 dev build.

Any advice on specific iperf test that is known to kick off this problem? traffic to the rtr, from the router, do I need tons of simultaneous streams?

I would like to see it fail before I spent the time.

TheNarc · Mar 27, 2019, 4:10 PM

@mervincm In my experience, I didn't need to set any exotic iperf options. Just running a few iperf tests between a host on the LAN and the LAN port of the pfSense machine was enough to reproduce the error.

mervincm · Mar 27, 2019, 11:25 PM

@TheNarc I guess I am fine then as after I stood up iperf as a server on pfSense
login-to-view
I hammered it quite hard from my desktop with 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 40, 50 parallel threads under iperf2 and never managed to cause the pfSense LAN nic to freeze.
I then shut down the iperf service and then started up iperf3 from the command line iperf3 -s
again, I hammered it quite hard from my desktop with 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 50, and then even 100 parallel threads a few times under iperf3 and again, never managed to cause the pfSense LAN nic to freeze.

The iperf performance wasn't great, say about 700-900 Mbps, but it was stable.

edit I did get 2 occurrences of the alert. I didn't notice the impact while testing, perhaps it came back up quickly?
Mar 27 17:09:23 kernel re1: watchdog timeout
Mar 27 16:38:39 kernel re1: watchdog timeout

Is a few errors like this symptomatic of this bug, or would you see far more of them?

I do see this occasionally in my logs, 35 total of them over a couple of months. I am not sure if that is expected or a problem to fix.

mervincm · Mar 28, 2019, 12:11 AM

Well, I decided to try it out. I added the driver as detailed above, and confirmed it was loaded, and now I beat on it 5 times as hard and I have not been able to get a single more watchdog error. thanks for helping me find and fix a problem I didn't even know I had!

tcarlisle · Apr 1, 2019, 12:38 AM

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

CI323

What I experienced, using the driver built into pfsense on Cl323, is that there will be watchdog timeouts frequently; but eventually the LAN interface will quite working completely until someone reboots the box. After installing the realtek driver 1.95 as described in this thread, those issues are no more and the box is stable.

If you are deploying pfsense on CI323, I'd strongly reccommend this driver and that stress testing the network is part of your checklist.

krackpot · Jul 16, 2019, 1:14 AM

Has anyone experienced a downgrade in performance to around 100mbps? It used to operate at my connection speed 175mbps, but after I had to shutdown and replace a power bar a few days ago, it hasn't been the same.

The dashboard reports the link is 1000mbps but that's not the actual speed when downloading a file.

Thanks for your time.

Napsterbater · Jul 16, 2019, 1:42 AM

@krackpot I have two systems running with this driver one on a 200mbps link one on a 300mbps, neither have trouble hitting those speeds.

stephenw10 · Jul 16, 2019, 9:02 AM

That sounds more like something is actually linking at 100Mb. That NIC should pass far more than that with either driver.

Steve

gordon · Aug 8, 2019, 8:13 PM

Have 2.4.4-RELEASE-p3 the latest driver for RTL8111G or must I manualy update the driver to latest version?

I have problem WAN port stop working, disable the port and enable and it start working again... its happens with low load 10mbit maybe... within 1 hour or so...

kiokoman · Aug 8, 2019, 8:40 PM

you need to manually update https://drive.google.com/open?id=1lBg8AIRiRfGBGeXe9kgKtAAma0VjiYfC
copy to /boot/kernel , rename to if_re.ko
kldload if_re.ko
or build it yourself

to load it at boot
edit /boot/loader.conf.local
and paste
if_re_load=“YES"

personally i've lost patience with realtek and at the end i bought an intel card

gordon · Aug 8, 2019, 9:18 PM

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

you need to manually update https://drive.google.com/open?id=1lBg8AIRiRfGBGeXe9kgKtAAma0VjiYfC
copy to /boot/kernel , rename to if_re.ko
kldload if_re.ko
or build it yourself

to load it at boot
edit /boot/loader.conf.local
and paste
if_re_load=“YES"

personally i've lost patience with realtek and at the end i bought an intel card

/root: kldstat
Id Refs Address Size Name
1 5 0xffffffff80200000 2ddcbe8 kernel
2 1 0xffffffff82fde000 7d290 if_re.ko
3 1 0xffffffff839fa000 10a0 cpuctl.ko

Is the drive active now ?

kiokoman · Aug 8, 2019, 9:22 PM

yes

gordon · Aug 8, 2019, 9:23 PM

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

yes

These should be it ?

Now can I go to bad, and see if internett is still working tomorrow morning :)

Thank you very much !

gordon · Aug 9, 2019, 5:24 AM

@gordon

The problem is still present...
Strange it is only a problem with WAN (re1) and not LAN (re0)...

gordon · Aug 9, 2019, 3:46 PM

[2.4.4-RELEASE][root@firewall.test.net]/root: grep re1 /var/run/dmesg.boot
re1: <Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller> port 0xd000-0xd0ff mem 0xa1104000-0xa1104fff,0xa1100000-0xa1103fff at device 0.0 on pci3
re1: Using Memory Mapping!
re1: Using 1 MSI-X message
re1: ASPM disabled
re1: version:1.95.00
re1: Ethernet address: 00:1e:06:45:02:83
re1: Ethernet address: 00:1e:06:45:02:83

[2.4.4-RELEASE][root@firewall.test.net]/root: route -n
route: usage: route [-46dnqtv] command [[modifiers] args]

[2.4.4-RELEASE][root@firewall.test.net]/root: arp -an | grep re1
? (92.221.80.253) at 00:1e:06:45:02:83 on re1 permanent [ethernet]
? (92.221.80.1) at 00:02:00:01:00:01 on re1 expires in 97 seconds [ethernet]

[2.4.4-RELEASE][root@firewall.test.net]/root: tcpdump -c 20 -n -i re1
tcpdump: verbose output suppressed, use -v or -vv for full protocol decode
listening on re1, link-type EN10MB (Ethernet), capture size 262144 bytes
03:49:11.244621 IP 92.221.80.253.49228 > XX.XX.XX.XX.XXX: 26302+ XXXXXXX (91)
03:49:11.244626 IP 92.221.80.253.49228 > XX.XX.XX.XX.XXX: 26302+ XXXXXXX. (91)
03:49:11.246135 IP 92.221.80.253.25525 > XX.XX.XX.XX.XXX: 28630+ XXXXXXX. (35)
03:49:11.246139 IP 92.221.80.253.25525 > XX.XX.XX.XX.XXX: 28630+ XXXXXXX. (35)
03:49:11.262982 IP 92.221.80.253.25525 > XX.XX.XX.XX.XXX: 42079+ XXXXXXX. (57)
03:49:11.262985 IP 92.221.80.253.25525 > XX.XX.XX.XX.XXX: 42079+ XXXXXXX. (57)
03:49:11.263013 IP 92.221.80.253.25525 > XX.XX.XX.XX.XXX: 23104+ XXXXXXX. (53)
03:49:11.263016 IP 92.221.80.253.25525 > XX.XX.XX.XX.XXX: 23104+ XXXXXXX. (53)
03:49:11.413788 IP 92.221.80.253.25525 > 109.247.114.4.53: 46408+ XXXXXXX. (41)
03:49:11.413793 IP 92.221.80.253.25525 > 92.220.228.70.53: 46408+ XXXXXXX. (41)
03:49:11.413823 IP 92.221.80.253.25525 > 109.247.114.4.53: 30408+ XXXXXXX. (41)
03:49:11.413826 IP 92.221.80.253.25525 > 92.220.228.70.53: 30408+ XXXXXXX. (41)
03:49:11.414619 IP 92.221.80.253.25525 > XX.XX.XX.XX.XXX: 9197+ XXXXXXX. (31)
03:49:11.414622 IP 92.221.80.253.25525 > XX.XX.XX.XX.XXX: 9197+ XXXXXXX. (31)
03:49:11.414695 IP 92.221.80.253.36009 > XX.XX.XX.XX.XXX: 247+ XXXXXXX. (31)
03:49:11.414699 IP 92.221.80.253.36009 > XX.XX.XX.XX.XXX: 247+ XXXXXXX. (31)
03:49:11.490012 IP 92.221.80.253.49228 > XX.XX.XX.XX.XXX: 26302+ XXXXXXX. (91)
03:49:11.490015 IP 92.221.80.253.49228 > XX.XX.XX.XX.XXX: 26302+ XXXXXXX. (91)
03:49:11.491250 IP 92.221.80.253.25525 > XX.XX.XX.XX.XXX: 28630+ XXXXXXX. (35)
03:49:11.491253 IP 92.221.80.253.25525 > XX.XX.XX.XX.XXX: 28630+ XXXXXXX. (35)
20 packets captured
20 packets received by filter
0 packets dropped by kernel