USB Nic Microchip LAN7500

NatMac21007

Hi total n00b here.

tldr: trying to get usb 2.0 Giga lan card working as lan interface. I believe the chipset is Microchip SMSC LAN7500.

Wanting to learn about pfsense and try it before changing my current working system. Test system is a dell optiplex 9020 and on install the onboard lan was detected and set up as wan.

When trying to autodetect lan, no link up was detected. I did have the lan cable out and plugged it in at the correct time. The usb nic was showing powered by the pc. After plugging in the lan cable the port connected led was lit and the traffic led was flashing.

The wan cable was still in and both cables were connected to the same switch, don't know if this was an issue.

I tried the autodetect again with the usb unplugged and when plugging it in it displayed:

"ugen0.5: <SMSC LAN7500> at usbus0 (disconnected)
ugen0.5: <SMSC LAN7500> at usbus0

No link-up detected."

Any pointers appreciated.

stephenw10

@natmac21007 said in USB Nic Microchip LAN7500:

SMSC LAN7500

There may not be a driver for that. The driver that exists in FreeBSD lists only the LAN9xxx devices: https://github.com/pfsense/FreeBSD-src/blob/devel-12/sys/dev/usb/net/if_smsc.c#L128

We will need the actual USB IDs from it know any more. You can install pfSense with only one NIC and then query the USB from there using usbconfig dump_device_desc

Steve

NatMac21007

@stephenw10

Hi Steve,

Thank you for your help, I ran the suggested command and tried to post the output but it got marked as spam. Hopefully I have included the relevant device info, if not let me know.

ugen0.2: <SMSC LAN7500> at usbus0, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=HIGH (480Mbps) pwr=ON (320mA)

idVendor = 0x0424
idProduct = 0x7500
bcdDevice = 0x0100
iManufacturer = 0x0001 <SMSC>
iProduct = 0x0002 <LAN7500>

Nathan

stephenw10

Yeah not a listed device in pfSense or FreeBSD even in the latest code. Some devices can be used using a generic driver if they report as a cdce device but you should see it appear as ue0.
Try connecting it and then checking the system log for the new entries it generates.

However it looks like it's probably unsupported. Try a different USB Ethernet device or just use one NIC and VLANs since USB Ethernet is better avoided anyway.

Steve