Official Realtek Driver Binary 1.95 For 2.4.4 Release

KNG75 · Aug 21, 2020, 6:25 AM

I'm on the official realtek driver and I got almost 20 days without a watchdog timeout. Unfortunately, I lost connectivity today and had the timeout. Had to reboot to resolve.

m4nf47 · Apr 26, 2021, 9:42 PM

Huge thanks to knight-of-ni for providing the latest compiled 1.96 driver and to everyone else in this thread, my rather nervous attempt at finally fixing this dreaded re watchdog timeout error seems to have worked for me using the current 2.4.5-RELEASE-p1. I have also forked and slightly updated the driver compilation instructions just in case anyone else needs to repeat this from scratch here -> https://gist.github.com/kmarf/960f3a00690756f978882607dec94179

In case of above links not working I've mirrored the compiled driver here -> https://drive.google.com/file/d/15lsDnnCz0C9rD9qIsmT0JeniFsSxgxTR/view?usp=sharing

and the original driver source file here -> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rMRo3fM9U-bSHLtpuGsbDY8oao00DSac/view?usp=sharing

Thanks again, fingers crossed this helps :)

kmot · Sep 8, 2020, 4:21 PM

@knight-of-ni is there any change You could build if_re.ko for FreeBSD 12.1 as well? :)

Rico · Sep 8, 2020, 5:12 PM

Here you go: rtl_bsd12.1_drv_v196.04.zip

-Rico

kmot · Sep 9, 2020, 5:53 AM

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

Here you go: rtl_bsd12.1_drv_v196.04.zip

-Rico

Thank you very much, Rico! :)

m4nf47 · Sep 11, 2020, 6:39 PM

UPDATE: GREAT NEWS! After 15 days using the compiled 1.96 driver (shared above) on 2.4.5-RELEASE-p1 my overall experience has been a huge reliability improvement, with not a single re watchdog timeout hang, even under traffic loads that were previously almost guaranteed to cause them. On this basis, I'd fully recommend testing this for anyone else struggling with Realtek. Thanks again to knight-of-ni for sharing, much appreciated.

nitewolfgtr · Sep 14, 2020, 3:53 PM

I have a Realtek 2.5G RTL8125B network card and after installing the 1.96 driver on my pfsense 2.4.5-p1, it recognized the card, however, I'm only getting about 500Mbps throughput on my WAN when I use it. I have a gigabit plan with Comcast and I should be getting roughly 1200Mbps but I'm getting nowhere near that. When I switch back over to my Intel gigabit NIC, I get about 950Mbps which tells me that the 1.96 driver isn't able to deliver on the full 2.5G speed.

is this what you are experiencing as well?

stephenw10 · Sep 14, 2020, 3:57 PM

Does it link at 2.5Gbps? Can we see the ifconfig output?

What hardware are you using it in?

Steve

nitewolfgtr · Sep 14, 2020, 4:41 PM

@stephenw10
It does link at 2.5Gbps and my hardware is HP 290-p0043w w/ Celeron G4900 and 4GB of RAM.

I have Trendnet 2.5G network adapter installed in the PCIe x1 slot.

Here's the ifconfig output. The 2.5Gbps NIC is re1. When I set my WAN interface back to igb0, I get 950Mbps down on speedtest. I just ran another test on re1 and I'm getting 615Mbps down.

igb0: flags=8c02<BROADCAST,OACTIVE,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
    options=6403bb<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,JUMBO_MTU,VLAN_HWCSUM,TSO4,TSO6,VLAN_HWTSO,RXCSUM_IPV6,TXCSUM_IPV6>
    ether ac:16:2d:95:08:dc
    hwaddr ac:16:2d:95:08:dc
    nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
    media: Ethernet autoselect
    status: no carrier
igb1: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
    options=500b8<VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,JUMBO_MTU,VLAN_HWCSUM,VLAN_HWFILTER,VLAN_HWTSO>
    ether ac:16:2d:95:08:dd
    hwaddr ac:16:2d:95:08:dd
    nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
    media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex>)
    status: active
igb2: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
    options=500b8<VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,JUMBO_MTU,VLAN_HWCSUM,VLAN_HWFILTER,VLAN_HWTSO>
    ether ac:16:2d:95:08:dd
    hwaddr ac:16:2d:95:08:de
    nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
    media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex>)
    status: active
igb3: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
    options=500b8<VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,JUMBO_MTU,VLAN_HWCSUM,VLAN_HWFILTER,VLAN_HWTSO>
    ether ac:16:2d:95:08:dd
    hwaddr ac:16:2d:95:08:df
    nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
    media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex>)
    status: active
re0: flags=8803<UP,BROADCAST,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
    options=2018<VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,WOL_MAGIC>
    ether c4:65:16:30:2b:67
    hwaddr c4:65:16:30:2b:67
    inet 172.16.2.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 172.16.2.255
    inet6 fe80::1:1%re0 prefixlen 64 tentative scopeid 0x5
    inet6 2601:2c2:780:6919:c665:16ff:fe30:2b67 prefixlen 64 tentative
    nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
    media: Ethernet autoselect
    status: no carrier
re1: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
    options=2018<VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,WOL_MAGIC>
    ether 3c:8c:f8:f9:7b:30
    hwaddr 3c:8c:f8:f9:7b:30
    inet6 fe80::3e8c:f8ff:fef9:7b30%re1 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x6
    inet6 2001:558:6022:76:cc0e:e073:c4d8:89b7 prefixlen 128
    inet <REDACTED> netmask 0xfffff800 broadcast 255.255.255.255
    nd6 options=23<PERFORMNUD,ACCEPT_RTADV,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
    media: Ethernet autoselect (2500Base-T <full-duplex>)
    status: active
enc0: flags=0<> metric 0 mtu 1536
    nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
    groups: enc
lo0: flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 16384
    options=680003<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,LINKSTATE,RXCSUM_IPV6,TXCSUM_IPV6>
    inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128
    inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x8
    inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000
    nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
    groups: lo
pflog0: flags=100<PROMISC> metric 0 mtu 33160
    groups: pflog
pfsync0: flags=0<> metric 0 mtu 1500
    groups: pfsync
lagg0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
    options=500b8<VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,JUMBO_MTU,VLAN_HWCSUM,VLAN_HWFILTER,VLAN_HWTSO>
    ether ac:16:2d:95:08:dd
    inet 172.16.1.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 172.16.1.255
    inet6 fe80::1:1%lagg0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0xb
    inet6 2601:2c2:780:6910:ae16:2dff:fe95:8dd prefixlen 64
    nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
    media: Ethernet autoselect
    status: active
    groups: lagg
    laggproto lacp lagghash l2,l3,l4
    laggport: igb1 flags=1c<ACTIVE,COLLECTING,DISTRIBUTING>
    laggport: igb2 flags=1c<ACTIVE,COLLECTING,DISTRIBUTING>
    laggport: igb3 flags=1c<ACTIVE,COLLECTING,DISTRIBUTING>
lagg0.20: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
    ether ac:16:2d:95:08:dd
    inet 172.16.20.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 172.16.20.255
    inet6 fe80::1:1%lagg0.20 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0xc
    inet6 2601:2c2:780:6912:ae16:2dff:fe95:8dd prefixlen 64
    nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
    media: Ethernet autoselect
    status: active
    vlan: 20 vlanpcp: 4 parent interface: lagg0
    groups: vlan
lagg0.30: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
    ether ac:16:2d:95:08:dd
    inet 172.16.30.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 172.16.30.255
    inet6 fe80::1:1%lagg0.30 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0xd
    inet6 2601:2c2:780:6913:ae16:2dff:fe95:8dd prefixlen 64
    nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
    media: Ethernet autoselect
    status: active
    vlan: 30 vlanpcp: 0 parent interface: lagg0
    groups: vlan
lagg0.40: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
    ether ac:16:2d:95:08:dd
    inet 172.16.40.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 172.16.40.255
    inet6 fe80::1:1%lagg0.40 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0xe
    inet6 2601:2c2:780:6914:ae16:2dff:fe95:8dd prefixlen 64
    nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
    media: Ethernet autoselect
    status: active
    vlan: 40 vlanpcp: 2 parent interface: lagg0
    groups: vlan
lagg0.50: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
    ether ac:16:2d:95:08:dd
    inet 172.16.50.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 172.16.50.255
    inet6 fe80::1:1%lagg0.50 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0xf
    inet6 2601:2c2:780:6915:ae16:2dff:fe95:8dd prefixlen 64
    nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
    media: Ethernet autoselect
    status: active
    vlan: 50 vlanpcp: 4 parent interface: lagg0
    groups: vlan
lagg0.60: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
    ether ac:16:2d:95:08:dd
    inet 172.16.60.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 172.16.60.255
    inet6 fe80::1:1%lagg0.60 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x10
    inet6 2601:2c2:780:6916:ae16:2dff:fe95:8dd prefixlen 64
    nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
    media: Ethernet autoselect
    status: active
    vlan: 60 vlanpcp: 1 parent interface: lagg0
    groups: vlan
lagg0.70: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
    ether ac:16:2d:95:08:dd
    inet 172.16.70.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 172.16.70.255
    inet6 fe80::1:1%lagg0.70 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x11
    inet6 2601:2c2:780:6917:ae16:2dff:fe95:8dd prefixlen 64
    nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
    media: Ethernet autoselect
    status: active
    vlan: 70 vlanpcp: 5 parent interface: lagg0
    groups: vlan
lagg0.80: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
    ether ac:16:2d:95:08:dd
    inet 172.16.80.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 172.16.80.255
    inet6 fe80::1:1%lagg0.80 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x12
    inet6 2601:2c2:780:6918:ae16:2dff:fe95:8dd prefixlen 64
    nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
    media: Ethernet autoselect
    status: active
    vlan: 80 vlanpcp: 1 parent interface: lagg0
    groups: vlan
lagg0.10: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
    ether ac:16:2d:95:08:dd
    inet 172.16.10.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 172.16.10.255
    inet6 fe80::1:1%lagg0.10 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x13
    inet6 2601:2c2:780:6911:ae16:2dff:fe95:8dd prefixlen 64
    nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
    media: Ethernet autoselect
    status: active
    vlan: 10 vlanpcp: 3 parent interface: lagg0
    groups: vlan

stephenw10 · Sep 14, 2020, 5:23 PM

What if you use re0? What does the CPU load look like when you're testing? top -aSH

nitewolfgtr · Sep 14, 2020, 5:41 PM

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

top -aSH

re0 works great and I get the full 950Mbps during speedtest.

CPU load for re0 is around 20-25% during speedtest, whereas re1 is around 10-15%.

Also, does this mean anything?
Output of pciconfig -lv for re0 shows the correct controller, but re1 is missing the device attribute.

% pciconfig -lv re0

re0@pci0:2:0:0: class=0x020000 card=0x843f103c chip=0x816810ec rev=0x15 hdr=0x00
        vendor     = 'Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.'
        device     = 'RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller'
        class      = network
        subclass   = ethernet

% pciconfig -lv re1

re1@pci0:4:0:0: class=0x020000 card=0x012310ec chip=0x812510ec rev=0x00 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.'
    class      = network
    subclass   = ethernet

stephenw10 · Sep 14, 2020, 8:19 PM

The missing description is unlikely to matter.

I was more interested in the queue or interrupt loads on your CPU cores while testing. igb will use multiple CPU cores by default. re usually isn't but this is new hardware so....

CPU usage between those NICs looks to be inline with the throughput at least.

Steve

pedropetz19 · Oct 11, 2020, 4:44 AM

@breakaway Thanks, you save me!!!

spippo · Nov 18, 2020, 3:30 PM

@Rico

THANKS! it works (on Xigmanas 12.1)

Do you know if WOL works? I tried to activate it, but I wasn't been able to make it work. Not sure if it's something that I do or it's just that it's not implemented in the driver (or the board for that matters).

Thank you
Bye

Rico · Nov 18, 2020, 6:13 PM

Nope sorry, I don't own any Realtek Card.

-Rico

stephenw10 · Nov 18, 2020, 7:12 PM

Now that there is a FreeBSD package for this I would use that over a, relatively, unknown binary source:

pkg add https://pkg.FreeBSD.org/FreeBSD:11:amd64/latest/All/realtek-re-kmod-v196.04_2.txz

That would be much easier if it was in our repo though. Let me see...

Steve

stephenw10 · Nov 19, 2020, 4:33 PM

https://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/11079

Should be in snaphots soon.

stephenw10 · Dec 11, 2020, 2:43 PM

Looks good:

[2.5.0-DEVELOPMENT][admin@apu.stevew.lan]/root: pkg search realtek
realtek-re-kmod-v196.04_2      Kernel driver for Realtek PCIe Ethernet Controllers

So do:
pkg install realtek-re-kmod
then
echo 'if_re_load="YES"' >> /boot/loader.conf.local

Then reboot and check the boot logs for:

re0: <Realtek PCIe GbE Family Controller> port 0x1000-0x10ff mem 0xf7a00000-0xf7a00fff,0xf7900000-0xf7903fff irq 16 at device 0.0 on pci1
re0: Using Memory Mapping!
re0: Using 1 MSI-X message
re0: ASPM disabled
re0: version:1.96.04
re0: Ethernet address: 00:0d:b9:37:30:10

Current version should be installed every time. It's built against our kernel source etc.

It's unlikely this will be backported to 2.4.5 but far easier (and probably safer) to use in 2.5 when it's released or in snapshots now.

Steve

Griffo · Dec 12, 2020, 2:46 AM

@stephenw10 For some reason I cannot seem to get this to load.
I had the previous driver loaded on 2.4.5 but have upgrade to 2.5.0-Development

I've followed your instructions, it appears to install OK, but I can't see it in kldstat nor does my log look like yours. Do you have any suggestions on what i might be doing wrong?

[2.5.0-DEVELOPMENT][root@gw.griffo.co]/boot: cat loader.conf.local
if_re_load="YES"

My logs

Dec 12 13:04:04	kernel		re0: <RealTek 8168/8111 B/C/CP/D/DP/E/F/G PCIe Gigabit Ethernet> port 0xe000-0xe0ff mem 0x81300000-0x81300fff,0xa0100000-0xa0103fff irq 16 at device 0.0 on pci1
Dec 12 13:04:04	kernel		re0: Using 1 MSI-X message
Dec 12 13:04:04	kernel		re0: Chip rev. 0x2c800000
Dec 12 13:04:04	kernel		re0: MAC rev. 0x00100000
Dec 12 13:04:04	kernel		miibus0: <MII bus> on re0

[2.5.0-DEVELOPMENT][root@gw.griffo.co]/boot: kldstat
Id Refs Address                Size Name
 1   25 0xffffffff80200000  3ae7ee0 kernel
 2    1 0xffffffff846fa000     1000 cpuctl.ko
 3    1 0xffffffff846fb000     8c90 aesni.ko
 4    1 0xffffffff84704000     37f8 cryptodev.ko
 5    1 0xffffffff84708000      b28 coretemp.ko
 6    1 0xffffffff84709000    26fe8 ipfw.ko
 7    1 0xffffffff84730000    10e18 dummynet.ko

[2.5.0-DEVELOPMENT][root@gw.griffo.co]/boot: pkg info | grep realtek
realtek-re-kmod-v196.04_2      Kernel driver for Realtek PCIe Ethernet Controllers
[2.5.0-DEVELOPMENT][root@gw.griffo.co]/boot:

[2.5.0-DEVELOPMENT][root@gw.griffo.co]/boot/modules: ls -al
total 1300
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel      512 Dec 12 13:42 .
drwxr-xr-x  10 root  wheel     1536 Dec 12 13:32 ..
-r-xr-xr-x   1 root  wheel   106328 Nov 11 13:23 bwi_v3_ucode.ko
-r-xr-xr-x   1 root  wheel  1168400 Nov 20 04:51 if_re.ko
-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel      148 Dec 12 13:29 linker.hints
[2.5.0-DEVELOPMENT][root@gw.griffo.co]/boot/modules:

Griffo · Dec 12, 2020, 7:34 AM

Nevermind, I had so many other issues I've rolled back to 2.4.5 so it's probably moot.