[solved] Upgraded to 2.5.0 Release - re0 not found

psp

Just upgraded from 2.4.5-p1 to 2.5.0 release. Realtek NIC (re) is not recognised anymore. No issues with Intels (em) NICs.
Installed from ISO, same problem.
Just a bit of warning for all (re) out there...

ptt

Just upgraded my test box (2 re interfaces), and no issues....

psp

This is Realtek NIC (the 2nd listed) not recognised:

ptt

re0@pci0:1:0:0:	class=0x020000 card=0x816810ec chip=0x816810ec rev=0x01 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.'
    device     = 'RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller'
    class      = network
    subclass   = ethernet
re1@pci0:4:0:0:	class=0x020000 card=0x81681849 chip=0x816810ec rev=0x06 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.'
    device     = 'RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller'
    class      = network
    subclass   = ethernet

psp

Thanks for your immediate feedback. Some more troubleshooting required here...

SteveITS

also for reference https://www.freebsd.org/releases/12.2R/hardware/
"The re(4) driver supports RealTek RTL8139C+, RTL8169, RTL816xS, RTL811xS, RTL8168, RTL810xE and RTL8111 based..."

jimp

Did you maybe manually load a driver onto 2.4.x that wasn't stock?

If you can get the 2.5 system online, pkg install realtek-re-kmod and that should drop an updated driver in place. If you had activated it before in loader.conf.local that should still be in place, but if not, edit or create /boot/loader.conf.local and add if_re_load="YES" on its own line.

psp

Many thanks @jimp. All is properly running now.

Just for common reference, installing from scratch, using .iso just downloaded, formatting (zfs) the target system, RealTek NIC is not found. Following your tip the card is now recognised and working.

jimp

That card must not be supported by the stock FreeBSD driver then. The one from the package repository is newer and from Realtek itself and not from FreeBSD.

psp

Just a quick update: for this kind of NIC, you need to install newer Realtek package even with 2.5.2-RC.

psp

@psp Installed 2.6.0 from scratch. Realtek NIC is now properly recognised out of the box. Well done Netgate/FreeBSD!

layla

It seems like the 2.5.0 package repositories for pfSense have been nuked?

To add the realtek driver to pfsense 2.5.0, I had to do some surgery:

So, here were the steps that worked:

Comment out the line disabling FreeBSD repositories in both of these files:

/usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/FreeBSD.conf
/usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/pfSense.conf

pkg update
pkg install -f realtek-re-kmod-v196.04_2
kldload /boot/modules/if_re.ko
kldstat
Confirm that kldstat command from #5 has loaded if_re.ko properly
Add the following two lines to /boot/loader.conf

if_re_load="YES"
if_re_name="/boot/modules/if_re.ko"

Uncomment the lines disabling FreeBSD repositories in step 1 (reverse step 1).

stephenw10

Those lines should be in /boot/loader.conf.local. If you add them directly in loader.conf they will be overwritten/removed by pfSense at some point.

Also it's better to pkg add that module directly from the FreeBSD pkg repos rather than enabling the full FreeBSD repo in pfSense. Doing so risks pulling in a pkg that overwrites something custom in pfSense potentially breaking everything!
See: https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/recipes/freebsd-pkg-repo.html#installing-packages

Steve

layla

@stephenw10 Thanks, saw the loader.conf.local stuff after I wrote that post, thanks for the reminder! I also didn't know you could pkg add - when pkg install realtek-re-kmod didn't work, I just hacked my way forward. Thanks for all the info!