Official Realtek Driver Binary 1.95 For 2.4.4 Release

TheNarc

coreybrett

interesting, I guess I don't have enough load to trigger the issue

coreybrett

does it trigger a reboot or something?

TheNarc

Not an automatic reboot, but the NICs just stop working until you manually reboot. Typically you can provoke it with iperf testing.

Love.IT.Again

@TheNarc Thanks for the compiled driver. I will be using it with my resurrected C1323 box (currently running on 32GB USB thumb drive). But before patching the compiled driver, I have to try iperf if it can trigger the problem.

What I remember (a year ago), after updating pfsense to this box, I noticed that the ethernet slowly becoming unusable. it will be good again after a reboot, but it will go back to the same problem after several minutes.

Thanks again.

TheNarc

@love-it-again No problem, I'm glad to hear it's useful. I run two CI323-based pfSense boxes and your memory syncs with mine. Without the official Realtek driver, it will eventually get watchdog timeouts and the NICs go down until a reboot. I remember that being easy to trigger with iperf to stress them too. I haven't had any issues since using the official driver though.

breakaway

I’ve just (in the last 2 days) applied this patch to two pfSense machines. One is a Intel N3150-based machine with dual Realtek NICs and another is a Intel J1800 with dual Realtek NICs.

Both used to crash and go unresponsive a lot since upgrading to 2.4.4 but now they’ve been up for over 24 hours. One has been syncing off-site backups for over 12 hours at 600 mbps over our 1gbps symmetric fiber internet connection, no issue.

lovingHDTV

How do I update my Pfsense box with this driver?

Do I just copy it to /boot/kernel?

thanks
david

breakaway

@lovinghdtv

Unzip & Place "if_re.ko" file at "/boot/kernel"

Change ownership and permissions on the if_re.ko file

chown root:wheel if_re.ko
chmod 0555 if_re.ko

Then edit "/boot/loader.conf” to add this line:

if_re_load=“YES”

Reboot.

Then go to diagnostics > command prompt in the WebGUI

Run the command

kldstat

If you did everything properly you’ll see “if_re.ko” in the list that comes up. If not, the driver isn’t loaded.

lovingHDTV

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

@lovinghdtv

Unzip & Place "if_re.ko" file at "/boot/kernel"

Change ownership and permissions on the if_re.ko file

chown root:wheel if_re.ko
chmod 0555 if_re.ko

Then edit "/boot/loader.conf” to add this line:

if_re_load=“YES"

Reboot.

Then go to diagnostics > command prompt in the WebGUI

Run the command

kldstat

If you did everything properly you’ll see “if_re.ko” in the list that comes up. If not, the driver isn’t loaded.

Thanks that worked like a charm.

Now hopefully it fixed my issue.

david

Derelict

I would put it in /boot/loader.conf.local

Napsterbater

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

@lovinghdtv

Unzip & Place "if_re.ko" file at "/boot/kernel"

Change ownership and permissions on the if_re.ko file

chown root:wheel if_re.ko
chmod 0555 if_re.ko

Then edit "/boot/loader.conf” to add this line:

if_re_load=“YES"

Reboot.

Then go to diagnostics > command prompt in the WebGUI

Run the command

kldstat

If you did everything properly you’ll see “if_re.ko” in the list that comes up. If not, the driver isn’t loaded.

Tip for anyone having a issue, If you copied and pasted the if_re_load=“YES" line fix the first “ and make it " yes there is a difference. /facedesk

Works like a charm, once I found that =P

Thanks for the updated driver and taking the time to compile, I have a ZOTAC ZBOX CI323 Nano with dual Realtek and a 2nd Generic system with a single Realtek (router on a Stick).

breakaway

Odd - looks like the double quotes are messed up. You can thank my Phone for that! I’ll update it.

Always use kldstat to verify if the driver if_re.ko is loaded!

Shell Output - cat /boot/loader.conf

kern.cam.boot_delay=10000
kern.ipc.nmbclusters="1000000"
kern.ipc.nmbjumbop="524288"
kern.ipc.nmbjumbo9="524288"
kern.geom.label.disk_ident.enable="0"
kern.geom.label.gptid.enable="0"
zfs_load="YES"
if_re_load=“YES”
autoboot_delay="3"
hw.usb.no_pf="1”

Shell Output - kldstat

Id Refs Address Size Name
1 20 0xffffffff80200000 2d9a7d0 kernel
2 1 0xffffffff82f9c000 381f00 zfs.ko
3 2 0xffffffff8331e000 a3a0 opensolaris.ko
4 1 0xffffffff83329000 7d2c0 if_re.ko
5 1 0xffffffff83911000 10a0 cpuctl.ko
6 1 0xffffffff83913000 2ec0 cryptodev.ko
7 1 0xffffffff83916000 c80 coretemp.ko

Napsterbater

@breakaway upper case is fine, it is the left/backwards/upside down quotation mark that if copy pasted makes the loader throw a syntax error and not load the driver.

penetal

Could you post a guide on how to compile the driver? Would be nice to know what is needed from pfsense sources etc and if any configs is needed.

Love.IT.Again

@penetal

Here's a link of the guide. The files are a little bit old so use the newer version (Realtek driver v1.95 and FreeBSD 11.2), but the process is still the same.

https://gist.github.com/jovimon/524e116471f249626fd2ccd141f3fe05

breakaway

Also, is there any way to “slipstream” the driver and the modification to the loader.conf so that it will automatically include this driver when installing from media?

coreybrett

would it be possible to put driver into a pfS package?

penetal

@love-it-again thanks a ton

stephenw10

It's very unlikely this could ever be added as an official package. Is it even using a license that would allow it?

The correct way to resolve this would be to fix the upstream FreeBSD driver. I've never looked to see what the differences are there.

Steve