Watchguard XTM850 Network Interface Orders

mr.rosh

Hi All,

newbie here. firstly i had to battle with watchgaurds locked boot system and cf drama's, and finally I just managed to have the pfsense 2.5.1 going on Watchguard XTM850.
Physical Device [Shows XTM 800 Series on hardware] and the network orders are rather funny.

Pic shows order [from left to right] as 0,1,2,..5, and the addon card from 6,7..13. therefore a total of 14 nics.

but the physical order and pfsense/freebsd nic orders don't match, adn it's a nuisance.

if I do ifconfig-a

[2.5.1-RELEASE][root@pfSense.local]/usr/local/etc: ifconfig -a
em0: flags=8802<BROADCAST,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
        options=81249b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM,LRO,WOL_MAGIC,VLAN_HWFILTER>
        ether 00:90:7f:a8:04:61
        media: Ethernet autoselect
        status: no carrier
        nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
em1: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
        description: LAN
        options=81209b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM,WOL_MAGIC,VLAN_HWFILTER>
        ether 00:90:7f:a8:04:60
        inet6 fe80::290:7fff:fea8:460%em1 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x2
        inet6 fe80::1:1%em1 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x2
        inet 192.168.100.1 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.100.255
        media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex>)
        status: active
        nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
em2: flags=8802<BROADCAST,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
        options=81249b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM,LRO,WOL_MAGIC,VLAN_HWFILTER>
        ether 00:90:7f:a8:04:63
        media: Ethernet autoselect
        status: no carrier
        nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
em3: flags=8802<BROADCAST,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
        options=81249b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM,LRO,WOL_MAGIC,VLAN_HWFILTER>
        ether 00:90:7f:a8:04:62
        media: Ethernet autoselect
        status: no carrier
        nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
em4: flags=8802<BROADCAST,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
        options=81249b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM,LRO,WOL_MAGIC,VLAN_HWFILTER>
        ether 00:90:7f:a8:04:65
        media: Ethernet autoselect
        status: no carrier
        nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
em5: flags=8802<BROADCAST,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
        options=81249b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM,LRO,WOL_MAGIC,VLAN_HWFILTER>
        ether 00:90:7f:a8:04:64
        media: Ethernet autoselect
        status: no carrier
        nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
em6: flags=8802<BROADCAST,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
        options=81249b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM,LRO,WOL_MAGIC,VLAN_HWFILTER>
        ether 00:90:7f:a8:04:67
        media: Ethernet autoselect
        status: no carrier
        nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
em7: flags=8802<BROADCAST,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
        options=81249b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM,LRO,WOL_MAGIC,VLAN_HWFILTER>
        ether 00:90:7f:a8:04:66
        media: Ethernet autoselect
        status: no carrier
        nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
em8: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
        description: WAN
        options=81209b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM,WOL_MAGIC,VLAN_HWFILTER>
        ether 00:90:7f:a8:04:5a
        inet6 fe80::290:7fff:fea8:45a%em8 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x9
        inet 192.168.1.138 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255
        media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex>)
        status: active
        nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
em9: flags=8802<BROADCAST,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
        options=81249b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM,LRO,WOL_MAGIC,VLAN_HWFILTER>
        ether 00:90:7f:a8:04:5b
        media: Ethernet autoselect
        status: no carrier
        nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
em10: flags=8802<BROADCAST,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
        options=81249b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM,LRO,WOL_MAGIC,VLAN_HWFILTER>
        ether 00:90:7f:a8:04:5c
        media: Ethernet autoselect
        status: no carrier
        nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
em11: flags=8802<BROADCAST,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
        options=81249b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM,LRO,WOL_MAGIC,VLAN_HWFILTER>
        ether 00:90:7f:a8:04:5d
        media: Ethernet autoselect
        status: no carrier
        nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
em12: flags=8802<BROADCAST,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
        options=81249b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM,LRO,WOL_MAGIC,VLAN_HWFILTER>
        ether 00:90:7f:a8:04:5e
        media: Ethernet autoselect
        status: no carrier
        nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
em13: flags=8802<BROADCAST,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
        options=81249b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM,LRO,WOL_MAGIC,VLAN_HWFILTER>
        ether 00:90:7f:a8:04:5f
        media: Ethernet autoselect
        status: no carrier
        nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>

So the real request now is:

Is there a way to modify the nic orderings and save it on pfsense/frebsd os layer [and is saved across reboots]
Is there an option to have this feature made available on the WebUI. I am certain there are many other users, whitebox users with nic adapters facing this issue.

thanks team.

stephenw10

Since FreeBSD 12 (I think) there is a way to do this. However doing so could introduce more issues that just assigning the NICs in the order they appear.

See: https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=pci#DEVICE_WIRING

So you can add device hints for each NIC that will specifiy em0 is a particular PCU device.

If you add those hints to /boot/loader.conf.local they will survive a reboot and a firmware upgrade.

You may also need to add the loader variable shown here. My own XTM850 would not boot 2.5.X without that as shown in that thread.

However consider what happens if you need to reinstall. That file is not stored in the config and will be lost. If you just restore the config without recreating the file and the device hints in it the interfaces will all be in the wrong order again.

Steve

mr.rosh

thanks, I will review it.

meanwhile,

Is there an option to have this feature made available on the WebUI. I am certain there are many other users, whitebox users with nic adapters facing this issue.

stephenw10

You can open a feature request, if there isn't one already. https://redmine.pfsense.org/

But for most people this is only an issue when you first install and have to discover the order NIC are assigned in. However you can use the auto-detect function to do that at interface assignment.

The only other time it can be a problem is if you swap out a NIC or add more NICs when the ordering can be changed. That can be painful!

The interface description is now given even at the CLI so once the interfaces are assigned it shouldn't be much of an issue really.
Other than the initial assignment what problem are you hitting?

Steve

mr.rosh

basically a nice to have option in gui/web interface.

If we can do nic assignments via webui, i am certain a few more tweaks, we'll be able to rename.map nic orders via web ui as well.

not everyone is a *nix person and getting those nic orders via command lines into files are not easy, esp over console.

anyways, issue is now sorted, thanks to my colleague who helped me with nic ordering. thanks Steve