[SOLVED]

Thank you all for all the tips and recommendations. I have now solved the issue by doing the following:

As pfSense was crashing when I plugged a cable into one of the ports, and the ports were all in auto (IB) mode as I discovered, I figured it might be an issue related to the NIC changing its configuration from IB to ETH, and FreeBSD trying to load the driver or something (I'm not sure).

However, I saw this amazing video on changing the mode of the NIC permanently with the MFT tool. As the configuration gets saved to the NIC itself, you can use any other Linux or FreeBSD installation, use MFT to change the values, and then reinstall pfSense. After that, the NIC is correctly in the ETH mode, and the driver loads correctly without issues. (I see no issues displayed in dmesg as far as I can tell.)

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1qN7Qg3bSg

Now, I just need to make sure the cards run stable and reliably, but from what I see now, I am confident.

Thanks again to everyone who helped.

You can recover the config from the pfSense install image as long as the partition is not completely destroyed, it gives you option before you install:
https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/backup/restore-during-install.html#recover-config-xml-from-existing-installation

Worst case you can cat the recovered config to the console from there and copy it out into a file.

Steve

@tman222 said in Actual status Mellanox® ConnectX-3 support:

Chelsio

Hello,

I know that people are very positive about Chelsio cards, but I think it are all cards of an older generation. At least here in Europe I have never seen that shops where offering new Chelsio cards.

However it is true that you can buy them for cheap on ebay (from the USA).

However, I think I am better off with a modern card. As far as I know now:

significant smaller (I am using small mini-ITX-systems, for my FreeNAS ans pFSense); far less heat; (important for multiple reasons: safes energy and is easier to keep cool & quiet !!) pcie3 (at the very least pcie2) more processor off-load (10gbit, smb, iSCSI) Using modern Pentium models, not so powerfull right now. actual and future support

Thinking that way, and as far as I am aware now, realistically seen, there are only two suppliers: Intel (sfp+ x520, x710 or utp x550) and Mellanox (sfp+ connect3). More choices would be great 😊

Intel is OK of course, but is not cheap and they are hardly sold second hand. All recent models are in fact not cheap. And “from the outside” connectX3 seems to have the best price performance, but is it true ….. ?

Do they have the same performance? Do they work "out of the box" And if they are installed, are they working without problems

Louis