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    PfSense on a Riverbed Steelhead

    Hardware
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    • ?
      Guest
      last edited by

      I'd go the fun route. It's way more fun.  ;D

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      • stephenw10S
        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
        last edited by

        Yup, immensely more satisfying when (if) you get it to work.  ;D

        Steve

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        • S
          Skybw89
          last edited by

          I took some pictures in better  resolution

          maybe you can see something on it

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          • ?
            Guest
            last edited by

            I'm afraid the real tracks are on the other side of the board. On top of that, GPIO control is done in software, so you'd have more luck poking around on the GPIO's on the shell.

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            • stephenw10S
              stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
              last edited by

              Mmm, with no jumpers and nothing in the BIOS it's time to start poking GPIOs.

              You might want to read this thread for some ideas how to do that: https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=81292.0

              Steve

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              • H
                HarryH
                last edited by

                Have anyone enable this bypass ports?

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                • ?
                  Guest
                  last edited by

                  @HarryH:

                  Have anyone enable this bypass ports?

                  Poke the GPIOs and you'll know :-)

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                  • stephenw10S
                    stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                    last edited by

                    Yup, you'll have to start poking GPIO registers. Tedious but fun when it works!

                    I can probably offer assistance as time allows.

                    Steve

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                    • O
                      Okijames @stephenw10
                      last edited by

                      @stephenw10

                      If you reinstall the original Steelhead code you can toggle the bypass NIC to "fail-to-block" i.e. keep both NICs up all the time. See CLI commands below. The interface name is "inpath0_0". You can do a "show run" CLI command to see all the settings and interface names.

                      Once you set "fail-to-block", the HW seems to remember the setting (it must be flipping a hidden BIOS setting) so you can install pfsense and have the additional two NICs.

                      Fail-to-Block CLI commands:
                      • no interface <interface-name> fail-to-bypass enable: Sets the interface to block when there is a failure.
                      • interface <interface-name> fail-to-bypass enable: Sets the interface to bypass when there is a failure.

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                      • P
                        pauloalb
                        last edited by pauloalb

                        Hello everyone,

                        I recently got a Rivebed Steelhead 250L identical to the on the image.
                        There is a jumper that (J20) located beside the connection between the power supply and the motherboard.
                        Just tried it now and it resets the bios settings :( not the bypass ports.

                        I am trying to get ESXI or PFsense or FreeNAS to work on it now.

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                        • stephenw10S
                          stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                          last edited by

                          So you also have ports stuck in by-pass mode? No BIOS access?

                          Steve

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                          • P
                            pauloalb @stephenw10
                            last edited by

                            @stephenw10 Thanks for the reply. Yes they are not turning on. I do have bios access ( pressing del on startup) but no option there to change any setting regarding network.

                            Tried:
                            Fail-to-Block CLI commands:
                            • no interface <interface-name> fail-to-bypass enable: Sets the interface to block when there is a failure.
                            • interface <interface-name> fail-to-bypass enable: Sets the interface to bypass when there is a failure.

                            Curious that i hear no clicks when i execute the commands, maybe power is already applied.

                            When running on RIOS, these commands do turn the lights off/on on the ports. After reboot and boot from pfsense on usb, the ports remain off. Pfsense detects all ports but only AUX and Primary usable.

                            I have tried also to install ESXI / Freenas on this appliance with no success even booting.

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                            • stephenw10S
                              stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                              last edited by

                              Ok, so unless you can see any jumpers that might set them then, as I said two years ago, you will have to start poking at GPIOs to try to find what controls them. You might find a clue in the RIOS boot logs or filesystem.

                              Steve

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                              • O
                                Okijames
                                last edited by Okijames

                                Regarding GPIOs, rather than poking around thi maybe this can be of use. Using ipmitool under Linux, these commands are said to enable inpath nics. Never tried it myself.

                                ipmitool -v raw 0x3e 0x20 0x80 0x7f 0x00 0x00
                                ipmitool -v raw 0x3e 0x20 0x80 0x7f 0x01 0x00

                                I think the above alters some i2c registers to do the trick. Try it under Linux first. If it works, try a FreeBSD method for setting such registers.

                                I took a look at the, again Linux based, approach used by rbMode on github. That guy's script refers to SMBUS and I can't figure how how SMBUS addresses relate to the ipmitool addresses.

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                                • O
                                  Okijames @Okijames
                                  last edited by

                                  Quick note: Riverbed used Silicom bypass nics in their larger appliances. Silicom has FreeBSD drivers with source code on their web site. The source code might provide insight into methods for enabling your bypass nics. URL for Silicom 2port bypass nic here....

                                  https://www.silicom-usa.com/pr/server-adapters/networking-bypass-adapters/gigabit-ethernet-bypass-networking-server-adapters/pe2g2bpi80-bypass-card/

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                                  • stephenw10S
                                    stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                    last edited by stephenw10

                                    Hmm, yeah that's interesting. It could almost certainly be done just using shell script then. Just need to figure out the smbus addresses......

                                    ipmitool is already installed though and takes the same input as Linux so should would if that data in correct. Though it still requires an IPMI device of some kind in raw mode.
                                    Anyone able to test it?

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                                    • P
                                      pauloalb
                                      last edited by

                                      @Okijames said in PfSense on a Riverbed Steelhead:

                                      ipmitool -v raw 0x3e 0x20 0x80 0x7f 0x01 0x00

                                      Just tried it on my riverbed 250 and unfortunetly it did not work. Error is:

                                      Could not open device at /dev/ipmi0 or /dev/ipmi/0 or /dev/ipmidev/0: No such file or directory

                                      There is a python script that i have tested to work but only on linux, Debian in my case. Pfsense's FreeBSD no luck so far.
                                      Maybe the script can help : Script

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                                      • stephenw10S
                                        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                        last edited by stephenw10

                                        What happened when you ran rbmode in pfSense? What error?

                                        You probably have to load the smbus drivers for that to work:

                                        kldload ichsmb
                                        kldload smb
                                        

                                        Steve

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                                        • P
                                          pauloalb @stephenw10
                                          last edited by

                                          @stephenw10 said in PfSense on a Riverbed Steelhead:

                                          kldload smb

                                          Hello,

                                          Thank you stephenw10 for your help.
                                          First the script imports smbus module but cant find it. I had to install pip and then smbus2 and change the script. That error went away.
                                          I executed the kldload commands with "success".

                                          After that rbmode gave this error:

                                          [2.3.5-RELEASE][root@pfSense.localdomain]/usr/local/sbin: rbmode u
                                          Setting mode to universal

                                          Traceback (most recent call last):
                                          File "/usr/local/sbin/rbmode", line 78, in <module>
                                          main()
                                          File "/usr/local/sbin/rbmode", line 70, in main
                                          setMode(args.mode)
                                          File "/usr/local/sbin/rbmode", line 38, in setMode
                                          s = smbus2.SMBus(0)
                                          File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/smbus2/smbus2.py", line 279, in init
                                          self.open(bus)
                                          File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/smbus2/smbus2.py", line 308, in open
                                          self.fd = os.open(filepath, os.O_RDWR)
                                          OSError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/dev/i2c-0'

                                          Indeed there is no /dev/i2x-0 but there is a /dev/smb0 so i replaced the reference in smbus2.py from i2c to smb but then another error occurred after re-executing rbmode:

                                          IOError: [Errno 25] Inappropriate ioctl for device

                                          Note: I got this script to work on Debian flavour of linux with success.

                                          My knowledge of python is very very low as is FreeBSD so i am stuck at the moment...

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                                          • O
                                            Okijames
                                            last edited by

                                            FWIWI tried compiling the Silicom drivers on a FreeBSD 10.3 (to match pfSense 2.3.5) and turns out the bpmod.ko kernel module (note this is pre-built, NOT actually available as source code in the driver package) won't work, it complains about not finding a Silicom card, as expected I guess...

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