Official Realtek Driver Binary 1.95 For 2.4.4 Release
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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.
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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
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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?
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would it be possible to put driver into a pfS package?
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@love-it-again thanks a ton
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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
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Just got finished putting this driver on my Odroid H2. This SBC has been nice but the NIC's seem to drop connection about a once a day.
Is there something I can do to track the state of the NIC's and the drivers to see what's happening when they lock up? I'd be willing to revert to the stock drivers just to find out why a daily reboot has been necessary.
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Not easily. You'd probably need to add debug messages to the driver for example. Maybe recompile it.
Are you (were you) seeing the watchdog timeouts?
Steve
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@stephenw10 I hadn't been seeing the watchdog timeouts but I hadn't been looking for them either. What's the best way to look for them?
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They would be in the system log if you are hitting that issue.
Steve
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Also, at least in my experience using the driver built in to FreeBSD, the watchdog timeout is pretty easy to provoke by running iperf tests against the LAN interface. I see that the Odroid H2 has dual RTL8111Gs whereas I, and I believe most others using the official Realtek driver, have been running Zotac machines that I believe have RTL8111Es. Both of those use the same driver, but I think it's fair to say that the RTL8111G is less "battle tested" with this driver. Have you also confirmed that the driver is indeed being loaded and used by looking for it in the output of ldstat?
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I have made FreeBSD 12 package.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ch4Z_w7gpbrpavQ4KhPUXUzYhRyzqnye/view?usp=sharing
I dont consider it my work - I have just packed it in one archive. It is stable for me on 12.0 p3 more than
"sed -i -e 's/TAILQ_FOREACH/CK_STAILQ_FOREACH/g' if_re.c" -
Will pfSense 2.5.0 / FreeBSD 12.0-RELEASE-p3 improve the built-in Realtek drivers situation at all?
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I would guess no. Not much activity in the FreeBSD repo:
https://github.com/pfsense/FreeBSD-src/commits/RELENG_2_5/sys/dev/re -
I've installed precomplied version of this driver for Nettop Gigabyte GB-BACE-3000 - working good with PFSence 2.4.4-RELEASE-p1. Uptime 31 days.
Thanks for the driver @TheNarc! -
I am currently using a Gigabyte GA-C1007UN-D
It has two realtek NICS either RTL8111E or RTL811F (online reviews conflict) I have never noticed this error, but would use this driver if it would increase stability. using the current 2.4.5 dev build.Any advice on specific iperf test that is known to kick off this problem? traffic to the rtr, from the router, do I need tons of simultaneous streams?
I would like to see it fail before I spent the time.
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@mervincm In my experience, I didn't need to set any exotic iperf options. Just running a few iperf tests between a host on the LAN and the LAN port of the pfSense machine was enough to reproduce the error.
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@TheNarc I guess I am fine then as after I stood up iperf as a server on pfSense
I hammered it quite hard from my desktop with 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 40, 50 parallel threads under iperf2 and never managed to cause the pfSense LAN nic to freeze.
I then shut down the iperf service and then started up iperf3 from the command line iperf3 -s
again, I hammered it quite hard from my desktop with 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 50, and then even 100 parallel threads a few times under iperf3 and again, never managed to cause the pfSense LAN nic to freeze.The iperf performance wasn't great, say about 700-900 Mbps, but it was stable.
edit I did get 2 occurrences of the alert. I didn't notice the impact while testing, perhaps it came back up quickly?
Mar 27 17:09:23 kernel re1: watchdog timeout
Mar 27 16:38:39 kernel re1: watchdog timeoutIs a few errors like this symptomatic of this bug, or would you see far more of them?
I do see this occasionally in my logs, 35 total of them over a couple of months. I am not sure if that is expected or a problem to fix.
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Well, I decided to try it out. I added the driver as detailed above, and confirmed it was loaded, and now I beat on it 5 times as hard and I have not been able to get a single more watchdog error. thanks for helping me find and fix a problem I didn't even know I had!
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@TheNarc said in Official Realtek Driver Binary 1.95 For 2.4.4 Release:
CI323
What I experienced, using the driver built into pfsense on Cl323, is that there will be watchdog timeouts frequently; but eventually the LAN interface will quite working completely until someone reboots the box. After installing the realtek driver 1.95 as described in this thread, those issues are no more and the box is stable.
If you are deploying pfsense on CI323, I'd strongly reccommend this driver and that stress testing the network is part of your checklist.
