Intel 82574L GbE LAN & MSI IM-945GSE-A
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Thanks ‘grandrivers’
FYI - UK pfSenser’s I have been in touch with Linitx.com and they can get the iBase MI800F board but it will retail at £266.50+VAT :o “ I know, that’s what I thought”
But I found this company www.icp-uk.com selling the IM-945GSE-A for £161.55 with stock available. I have to say I think this is the perfect motherboard for a pfSense firewall and will be purchasing one ASAP.
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Grandrivers, I am curious. Did you add an additional Intel NIC with the same chipset? I definitely want this board. I was leaning towards the MS-9832 because of the dual core Atom Processor but hearing about the Realtek issues I am thinking twice. Does anyone know if the Realtek issues will be resolved? Is it a issue isolated to FreeBSD 7.1?
I wish there was a Atom N330 Board with 2 Intel Gbe(heck if I am wishing why not three?)!!!
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Stick with Intel NIC's and save yourself any grief - trust me I learnt the hard way http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,11913.0.html
Ideally if you can afford it you would have just one Intel server grade NIC and a GB VLAN switch. If not as many Intel NICS as you can afford or fit, under FreeBSD anyway but you will have to pay for it which ever you choose. Since I changed my setup and stopped using the Realtek's my set up has been rock solid. I was sceptical that it could just be down to the NIC's giving me all that grief but time has proven me wrong. -
yes i added a third INTEL nic into it all three nic do require 7.1 as the freebsd base though
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I don't know about the realtek 8111C, but the 8110 SC finally works under 1.2.3.
Cheesyboofs,
You are running the same exact setup as me with the mobo and dlink NIC. 1.2.3 handles all the features of the motherboard fine to include the NICs.-V
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I have disabled the Realtek's and am just using 1 Intel GB server NIC with VLAN's
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Well I installed my MSI IM-945GSE-A last night and despite a couple of teething issues I am in and working fine. The NIC's do indeed work fine under 1.2.3 (thanks grandrivers) and the throughput is fantastic.
I was getting a lockup at boot when the 6 serial ports where discovered - "I know, who needs 6 serial ports" so I disabled the four internal ports and kept the two external ports.
It then stopped at the mountroot> prompt. For some reason although my microdrive is set as IDE master it will sometimes be detected in the BIOS as IDE slave meaning I have to type ufs:ad1s1a rather than ad0s1a to get it to carry on booting. As I know my microdrive is a known quantity I suspect this to be a firmware bug with the motherboard and it has only done it twice.
On the whole I am very please with this board, low powered and fanless with dual Intel Gb NIC's what more could you ask for. The only downside is the cost, I ended up spending 190 odd pound but it was more than worth it.
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Where did you buy your MSI IM-945GSE-A from? I was about to pull the trigger today, and it's either on speical order or available in may.
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http://www.icp-uk.com/index.php?act=viewProd&productId=416 Note this price is without VAT and delivery.
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Just some more feedback on this board:
I am now over two weeks in with this board and I can say it has performed perfectly. My old fanless Jetway board still required a fan in the 1U Casetronic Travla C158 60W case I have as the chipset use to get so hot it would lockup in this case, this board however does not get hot and does not lock up.
The IDE master/slave problem I mentioned was tracked down to my card reader and microdrive in the end and hard setting it to slave cured the problem.
If you want a guaranteed stress free mini-itx install you could do allot worse than purchase one of these boards.
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the only thing I wish could get sorted out is hbmon so we could see the temp and other monitoring info seems like the bootup is a little slow but defiantly no deal breaker would also make a nice nas once frenas gets based off of 7.1 freebsd and this board is a little hard to come by must be popular
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Hi,
I'm also thinking in buying the MSI IM-945GSE with 2 NIC's. But the only stable download of pfsense I see is the 1.2.2 based on FreeBSD 7.0.
Questions:- did anybody test the 1.2.2
- where can i download 1.2.3
- should I emideatly try 2.0Alpha??
I need squid, squidguard, Darkstat, DHCP and the Captive Portal.
greetings from belgium, Sascha
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You need v1.2.3, get an ISO from here.
http://snapshots.pfsense.org/FreeBSD7/RELENG_1_2/
It is fine for production IMHO, I'm using it now if you read the thread fully.
Don't go for v2.0a yet because when you are testing new hardware you need a (known good) stable OS so if you run into any problems you can easily rule out the OS. Once you are happy with the hardware (which you will be) then you can try the more buggy Alpha release of v2.0.
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Thanks a lot for the link, will test it as soon as the MB has arrived.
greetings from belgium, Sascha
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Cant' believe I didn't see this sooner, I am also a lover of this board :) It's a great platform for PfSense.
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Would anyone be able to recommend a low-power PSU and/or a 1U/2U mini-ITX case for this MSI board? Would this board work with a standard micro-ATX case? Your help is very appreciated. I was originally planning on using an AMD Lima processor for a new build but quickly realized this approach will conserve a lot of energy and hopefully cost up front.
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I have mine in this case - http://www.itx-warehouse.co.uk/Product.aspx?ProductID=361 it comes with a 60W external silent PSU. This case has space for an extra PCI card so is wider than it needs to be but is very thin so I have mine squeezed in a scanner shelf under a desk.
Casetronic Travla cases aren't cheep but they are VERY good quality, but in truth you could fit this board in any mini-itx case it has no fan and nothing to stick out - hell even the memory fits flat on the board!
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Thanks for the help with the case. The Casetronic you've linked is pretty much the perfect fit for this board in terms of scalability and cost. If only it were rackmount…nothing the mod squad can't fix. ;D
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This hardware looks interesting for my first pfsense box (I've been using m0n0wall so far). I'd like to put a slimline DVD reader in it and run pfsense live with settings on a CF card. The reason for running live is to reduce sound from a hard disk, but I guess I could use an SSD drive for that.
A question regarding that Travla case:
It seems no CF card reader is included with the case, what kind of reader would you recommend together with this motherboard?By the way, running pfsense live - is it a good idea?
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How about one made just for the case;
http://linitx.com/viewproduct.php?prodid=10410 :DOr use a USB pen and run embeded;
http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,9845.msg55513.html#msg55513
http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,10214.msg57614.html#msg57614Or a micro drive (its a real hard drive just in a compact flash box ;) )
http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,11016.msg61193.html#msg61193 -
Just as a heads up Logic Supply FINALLY has these boards back in stock (I just ordered 2 more) for those in the US:
http://www.logicsupply.com/products/ms_9830
I snagged a couple of those with 2gb RAM and this case: http://www.logicsupply.com/products/m360 for ~$270 shipped each.
They also have a dual core atom board from MSI that uses the Realtek RTL8111C Gigabit chipsets (Should be supported in 1.2.2 if i read right but don't hold me to it) if you'd rather:
http://www.logicsupply.com/products/ms_9832I think the dual intel LAN cements this board as a great platform.. will do some power testing soon here and get that up as well..
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Anyone have any kind of CPU Temp monitoring available for this board?? I'm on 1.2.3 and saw this: http://wiki.freebsd.org/AsusEee didn't know if waaay down at the bottom the temp utility could work with any ATOM proc or if it was chipset based… It's the only thing I really wish I could get with this..
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hi my board wont work ? i have download the pfSense-1.2.3-20090422-0357.iso.gz extract and burn. but when i comes to sio:2 type 16550A it stop and hangs what can the problem be ?
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try reducing the number serial port in the bios i also selected to only use 4 usb ports
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ok i was trying to do this. but in my hurry i did a mistake and closed all of my usb ports. does any one know how to put them on again ?
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cant see it in the manual try pulling battery and kill the power for awhile
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thank you ;D now its working again. saw wich one should i turn off ? does you now it ? i got it is now working fine besides from one thing it will only resgoncie three of my four intel nic idon,t now why. It finds the last one too but with a mac adress 0
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on install what type of kernel did you use ? the atom only has one prossecor and no extra kernels is it the uniprossecor i should use ?