Dell VEP1400-X / VMWare Edge 620 NIC question

eloich

Hello,

Got my hands on a VMWare Edge 620 (cute little C3558 with 8gb RAM, 6 gb NICs and 2 SFP+). I thought it would be a great project to install PfSense on that unit but while I knew I was going down a rabbit hole when I started the project, seems like I've gone way deeper than I thought and it seems like I've hit my first hard road block.

I was able to circumvent the watchdog issue on the PIC and install PfSense CE on the unit (loading regular VEP-1400X bios first), which is all fine and dandy. Both SFP+ ports appear to be working as they should (popped in a couple of cheap 10GBTek rj45 adapters I had lying around and traffic is flowing just fine). I also updated CE to Plus at this time.

The only remaining issue (I think) lies with the 6 gb ports; when I try pciconf -lv, here is an example of the output:

none6@pci0:7:0:0:       class=0x020000 rev=0x11 hdr=0x00 vendor=0x8086 device=0x15e5 subvendor=0x8086 subdevice=0x0000
    vendor     = 'Intel Corporation'
    device     = 'Ethernet Connection X553 1GbE'
    class      = network
    subclass   = ethernet
none7@pci0:7:0:1:       class=0x020000 rev=0x11 hdr=0x00 vendor=0x8086 device=0x15e5 subvendor=0x8086 subdevice=0x0000
    vendor     = 'Intel Corporation'
    device     = 'Ethernet Connection X553 1GbE'
    class      = network
    subclass   = ethernet

Of course, showing only 2 of the 6 1gb interfaces. Note that none of the interface's LEDs light up when plugged into a switch. Also, seems like even in the BIOS these NICs don't detect link status.

However, I do know that the NICs should be fine, as they appear to breathe back to life when I load Dell's DiagOS (boot into DiagOS, which seems to be Debian based, then LEDs blink when patch cables plugged in, even able to get network to connect through the CLI using regular Debian hocus-pocus lingo). That led to taking a look at the rc.local file (tip from someone over at STH forum) which indeed shows that the rc.local file will run the following command, which apparently wakes up/activates the NICs:

i2cset -y 1 0x31 0x1 0xff

Then the script appears to rescan the PCI bus.

Now, since i2c tools don't appear to be available as packages (understand that PfSense provides a reduced set, totally fine since it's a firewall/security optimised device), is there a way to push these flags into the system so that the NICs get activated at boot?

Thanks for any insights!

eloich

Replying to myself here.

Sorry for waisting everyone's time; seems like I got it working somehow. Now, I really hate to say it, but I got excited and fell into my bad habits of doing more than one thing at a time then retest, and as such I don't know what fixed it exactly.

Here is what I did anyways, as it may help somebody else in the future.

Found out after some more research that there might be 4 10gb ports after all (2x SFP+ and 2x rj45, which I assume are labeled GE5 and GE6 on the unit). Went on to figure this out, dismantling the unit (removing the top plastic cover) and kind of stumbled on two small pusbutton switches besides the NIC ports.

Booted the unit up and kind of stumbled on the switches (didn't want to press them but my old clumsy fingers did not agree) and connected GE5 to a cable and the LEDs lit up. Now, guess what, I can see the interfaces just fine. I'm both happy and rather frustrated at this point.

See pciconf -lv results below:

ix1@pci0:5:0:1: class=0x020000 rev=0x11 hdr=0x00 vendor=0x8086 device=0x15c4 subvendor=0x8086 subdevice=0x0000
    vendor     = 'Intel Corporation'
    device     = 'Ethernet Connection X553 10 GbE SFP+'
    class      = network
    subclass   = ethernet
ix2@pci0:7:0:0: class=0x020000 rev=0x11 hdr=0x00 vendor=0x8086 device=0x15e5 subvendor=0x8086 subdevice=0x0000
    vendor     = 'Intel Corporation'
    device     = 'Ethernet Connection X553 1GbE'
    class      = network
    subclass   = ethernet
ix3@pci0:7:0:1: class=0x020000 rev=0x11 hdr=0x00 vendor=0x8086 device=0x15e5 subvendor=0x8086 subdevice=0x0000
    vendor     = 'Intel Corporation'
    device     = 'Ethernet Connection X553 1GbE'
    class      = network
    subclass   = ethernet

And I'm also able to see the interfaces in the GUI too (could only see both SFP+ interfaces before):

Thanks for looking anyways... let me know if you want some more info about that rabbit's hole I've got myself into :-)

Cheers,

Nnyan

Just to confirm but you had to flip the switches inside to get the NICs to work?

eloich

@nnyan There are a couple of micro switches near the side of the NIC ports on the board. I just pressed on the buttons with the unit powered on, then it rebooted a couple of times then the NICs got activated. Not really sure which of the two switches do what but since it seems like a one-way process can't really be sure. Also, I'm pretty happy with the current results so I did not want to fool around more.

See picture below for a better view of the switches I'm talking about.

Hoping that helps,