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    Official Realtek Driver Binary 1.95 For 2.4.4 Release

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    • stephenw10S
      stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
      last edited by

      The driver provided by Realtek can commonly help if you're seeing watchdog timeout errors. But it sounds like that's not what you're seeing so it may not make any difference here. You have nothing to lose by trying it though.

      Steve

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        gordon @stephenw10
        last edited by gordon

        @stephenw10
        Problem is still present, card stop working and report DOWN in status under

        Remember both card is identical network card... strange it’s only WAN card who goes down.

        Have now tried disabling «Disable hardware checksum offload»

        Is it possible to make the card recycle DISABLE and then ENABLE when these happens, way around the problem until I find a fix?

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          gordon @gordon
          last edited by

          «Disable hardware checksum
          Was not fixing the problem....

          Does anybody know how I can auto disable and enable the card when it goes down?

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          • kiokomanK
            kiokoman LAYER 8
            last edited by

            try with
            /etc/rc.d/netif restart re0

            ̿' ̿'\̵͇̿̿\з=(◕_◕)=ε/̵͇̿̿/'̿'̿ ̿
            Please do not use chat/PM to ask for help
            we must focus on silencing this @guest character. we must make up lies and alter the copyrights !
            Don't forget to Upvote with the 👍 button for any post you find to be helpful.

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              gordon @kiokoman
              last edited by gordon

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

              try with
              /etc/rc.d/netif restart re0

              Thank you, I need some script to detect when it shall happens also...

              I found some things to try another place on these forum, so I have added these lines to the boot config:
              net.inet.tcp.tso=0
              hw.pci.enable_msix=0
              hw.pci.enable_msi=0
              hw.re.tso_enable=0

              to the boot loader config, and for now I haven`t seen the issue again, need more hours... will report back later.

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              • stephenw10S
                stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                last edited by

                Yes, definitely disable all hardware offloading features. Check what is still enabled using ifconfig re1.

                Did you try re-assigning the NICs? Does the fault follow re1 or remain on WAN?
                It's likely you are downloading far more traffic that uploading. Whichever NIC is WAN is doing the receiving of that traffic and a number of those hardware offloading features are receive only.

                Steve

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                  gordon @stephenw10
                  last edited by gordon

                  @stephenw10 said in Official Realtek Driver Binary 1.95 For 2.4.4 Release:

                  Yes, definitely disable all hardware offloading features. Check what is still enabled using ifconfig re1.

                  Did you try re-assigning the NICs? Does the fault follow re1 or remain on WAN?
                  It's likely you are downloading far more traffic that uploading. Whichever NIC is WAN is doing the receiving of that traffic and a number of those hardware offloading features are receive only.

                  Steve

                  I reinstalled the whole pfsense yesterday and then I swapped so re0 is WAN and re1 is LAN.
                  The problem have always followed the card I have assigned to be WAN.

                  The problem has not accour after I disabled al the things mention above from the HW i the boot loader. But there is a strange thing the uptime on the box is never 1 hour and 47 minutes, but I have not restarted the box today..... I think there are something wrong with the clock... its not going correct... it`s deviate more and more from the "real time"....

                  Maybe there is a releation here ? lead time on the DHCP maybe got problem...

                  I will look into getting the clock correct first.

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                  • stephenw10S
                    stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                    last edited by stephenw10

                    Make sure NTP is configured and working. All APUs are old now, the CMOS battery may be dead.

                    Edit: Is this an APU? Not sure where I pulled that from.. 🙄

                    Steve

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                    • G
                      gandalfk7
                      last edited by

                      This post is deleted!
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                      • G
                        gandalfk7 @TheNarc
                        last edited by

                        @TheNarc

                        I just subscribed to thank you for your work,
                        I was going mad trying to understand the issue and finally this morning I found a post that directed me here.

                        The issues I had on my ci323 nano seems all solved now.

                        thanks again

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                        • M
                          matrix200
                          last edited by

                          @TheNarc, just wanted to thank you and post an interesting update.
                          Apparently your fix also solves an issue I had been experiencing with passing the realtek card through to a VM running Pfsense on a Centos 8 host.
                          Running on J4105-ITX motherboard.
                          The error occured with pretty much any realtek card I tried including the onboard one.
                          Until now, it would give an nasty DMAR error and the card would always stop working after pfsense VM reboot.
                          Sometimes, it would show a watchdog timeout, sometimes would just quetly stop responding.
                          With this driver, the card is stable and there is no DMAR error in Host's dmesg.

                          Current network "hardware" :
                          Running 2.2RC in Virtualbox 4.2.16.

                          Retired:
                          ALIX2C2 , 4 gigabyte disk cf card running 2.0 (official release).

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                          • knight-of-niK
                            knight-of-ni
                            last edited by

                            I've had three Zotac CI32x boxes deployed, running pfsense for a few years now, and I had not run into the dreaded watchdog timeout error until after upgrading to pfSense 2.4.4. Now the lan interface of two out of three boxes goes silent about once a month. Fortunately, since it it is the lan interface, I just reboot them remotely.

                            Thanks for doing the work building this driver. This saved me quite a bit of time.

                            Question:
                            With this new driver, can/should I re-enable hardware offloading under Advanced-> Networking?

                            I've also got the following set in loader.conf.local. These were suggested as workarounds in another thread. Is it safe to remove these?
                            hw.re.msi_disable=1
                            hw.pci.enable_msix=0
                            hw.pci.enable_msi=0

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                              TheNarc @knight-of-ni
                              last edited by

                              @knnniggett I'm glad to hear the driver has been useful. I'm sorry to hear about the LAN interface flakiness; that's not something I've seen (yet) in on the two CI323s I run. With regard to your questions:

                              I would not recommend re-enabling hardware offloading. I believe that Realtek claims to support it, but from what I understand it can be prone to bugginess and you're unlikely to see any tangible benefit from it. Also, it's the sort of thing that (I think) you wouldn't necessarily know right away if it works. So you might try it and it would seem fine, but some time down the line you'd have a problem and, if you're anything like me, probably forget that you'd changed that setting a while back and not immediately realize that it's related.

                              As for the loader.conf.local entries, at least based on my experience it should be fine to get rid of them. I don't have them set on either of my boxes right now and haven't had any issues.

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                                Napsterbater @knight-of-ni
                                last edited by

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

                                I've had three Zotac CI32x boxes deployed, running pfsense for a few years now, and I had not run into the dreaded watchdog timeout error until after upgrading to pfSense 2.4.4. Now the lan interface of two out of three boxes goes silent about once a month. Fortunately, since it it is the lan interface, I just reboot them remotely.

                                Thanks for doing the work building this driver. This saved me quite a bit of time.

                                Question:
                                With this new driver, can/should I re-enable hardware offloading under Advanced-> Networking?

                                I've also got the following set in loader.conf.local. These were suggested as workarounds in another thread. Is it safe to remove these?
                                hw.re.msi_disable=1
                                hw.pci.enable_msix=0
                                hw.pci.enable_msi=0

                                I do not have these anymore either with the new driver.

                                Should be good to remove.

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                                • fromage9747F
                                  fromage9747
                                  last edited by

                                  I made myself a new router after my previous one failed(power supply fried).

                                  I got myself a GIGABYTE GA-N3160N-D3V motherboard with an embedded CPU and DUAL NIC's perfect for making a nice small compact router with pfsense. Everything was hunky-dory for a few months with no issues until one day I started encountering this "watchdog timeout" issue.

                                  I thought that the CPU had overheated and bent the solder like how the Xbox 360 did with the RROD. The CPU was only at 65 degrees Celcius...

                                  I installed fans in the case and ensured that the temp never grew past 40 degrees Celcius. The issue still persisted and I thought I would now need to RMA the board.

                                  As I cannot go without internet for longer periods of time due to working from home I needed to get my original pfsense router up and running before sending this board in.

                                  Whilst in the process of doing so I was doing some uploading of work to Jira when one gif file would repeatedly kill the router. I was stunned, how on earth could a 2mb file kill the router?!?!?!

                                  I thought I would do one last search online to see if I could find anything software related that might be the issue and I stumbled upon this thread.

                                  I can confirm that applying the Realtek driver has now solved my issue!

                                  Thank you!

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                                  • Z
                                    Zcool31
                                    last edited by

                                    I just ran into a situation similar to @fromage9747, but with a cheapo mini-pc that has two realtec nics of the type discussed above. Worked fine for months, but today watchdog timer started timing out every few minutes. After updating the driver, it hasn't happened yet.

                                    I followed this post:

                                    https://forum.netgate.com/post/799000

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                                      bedpan @Zcool31
                                      last edited by

                                      @Zcool31

                                      Exact same thing... Just updated. We will see what happens..

                                      Thanks all!

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                                      • fromage9747F
                                        fromage9747
                                        last edited by

                                        @Zcool31 @bedpan Going onto two weeks now without another watchdog timeout. Pretty confident the issue is fixed. But dam, what a pesky issue! I was going to RMA the board. Good thing I didn't!

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                                        • B
                                          bedpan @fromage9747
                                          last edited by

                                          @fromage9747
                                          Thanks for the followup. Nice to know this is likely dealt with.. A few hours now and problem free.

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                                          • N
                                            Napsterbater
                                            last edited by

                                            Just for confirmations is anybody upgraded to 2.4.5 with FreeBSD 11.3?

                                            Any issues or should it be good to go?

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