UP Squared

[Dazdigo]

Anyone planning a building a PFSense box on the UP Squared boards? I would like to see some reviews before I take the plunge.

Would be good if someone tested it with a gigabit fiber internet connection to see how well it handles the load.

No option for ECC ram is another thing that is concerning for me since routers are designed for continuous operation which would be beneficial to use ECC.

Their Kickstarter page has the best breakdown of their system: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/802007522/up-squared-the-first-maker-board-with-intel-apollo

[pfBasic]

Which LAN chip are used in UP Squared ?
Realtek 8111

Pass.

Those will be exceptional for HTPC's, but Realtek NICs are a non-starter on pfSense.

Also, don't worry about ECC RAM on your firewall/router, you don't need it.

[whosmatt]

I've been meaning to buy one, once they ship, mainly for curiosity's sake.  Yes, it's disappointing that they use Realtek chipset, but that's to be expected for the price and level of hardware.

I'm not too worried about that since I'll probably be running Linux on it but if/when I do get one I'd be too curious not to try pfSense.  Just a guess, but my conjecture is that it will work just fine, but that the NICs will limit throughput somewhat.

[seag_rvc]

Just managed to install pfSense on UP squared. Unfortunately it wasn't problem free process.

• UP squared does not support BIOS legacy mode in UEFI and therefore I only managed to install 2.4 BETA of pfSense where UEFI support is apparently better.

• After successful boot pfSense failed to load properly - just as FreeBSD. I had to edit memstick image to disable all PCI devices on startup.

• Because of that I've lost ability to install pfSense to the internal flash memory. It can only run on usb flash disk.

If anyone wants more info or howto pls give a shout here.

[whosmatt]

@seag_rvc:

Just managed to install pfSense on UP squared. Unfortunately it wasn't problem free process.

• UP squared does not support BIOS legacy mode in UEFI and therefore I only managed to install 2.4 BETA of pfSense where UEFI support is apparently better.

• After successful boot pfSense failed to load properly - just as FreeBSD. I had to edit memstick image to disable all PCI devices on startup.

• Because of that I've lost ability to install pfSense to the internal flash memory. It can only run on usb flash disk.

If anyone wants more info or howto pls give a shout here.

Thanks for the update.  How's the performance?

[seag_rvc]

Very basic initial testing shows it performs pretty well. I had no chance to do proper testing though. What stuff would you like me to test?

[whosmatt]

I'd think that the total throughput would be limited by the (re) interfaces, but it would be nice to know what that limit is.  I'm gonna guess 600Mbps or so.  Do you happen to have a 1Gbps WAN connection?  If not, that type of test could be done in a lab environment but you'd have to have the setup for it.

[GasmanC]

@seag_rvc:

If anyone wants more info or howto pls give a shout here.

I'd love how to know how to make this work. How do I alter the memstick image to disable PCI devices?

Cheers

[randomaustralian]

i have it running right now…

but it doesnt get a ipv6 address from my provider and i cant get a reason why...

i bought a 30gb msata ssd and installed it on that.

[kaweksl]

I managed to get rid off sdhci controller timeout and install pfsense on eMMC by changing some settings in BIOS

In Chipset -> South Bridge -> SCC Configuration i have
SCC SD Card Support : Disable
SCC eMMC Support D28: Enable
eMMC Max Speed: HS400
SCC UFS Support D29: Enable
SCC SDIO Support D30: Disable

Board Up Squared BIOS Version: UP-APL01 R2.1 (UPA1AM21) (09/01/2017)