Realtek 1.97 Driver and pfSense Plus 23.01

knight-of-ni

The installation workflow for the Realtek driver has been a bit of a moving target over the years. For those who have not kept up, it can seem confusing as to what method to follow.

Do I build the driver from source? Is a pkg available in the pfSense repo? Is a pkg available from the FreeBSD repos?

The answers to these questions has varied over time and versions of pfSense.

For the record, if you are running pfSense 23.01 and your hardware has modern Realtek nics, then as of March 23, 2023, this is a simple way to do it:

pkg install -y net/realtek-re-kmod

Then create /boot/loader.conf.local and add the following to it:

if_re_load="YES"
if_re_name="/boot/modules/if_re.ko"
hw.re.max_rx_mbuf_sz="2048"

Reboot.

dmesg -a should now report the version string of the driver like so:

re0: <Realtek PCIe GbE Family Controller> port 0x5000-0x50ff mem 0x7fe04000-0x7fe04fff,0x7fe00000-0x7fe03fff at device 0.0 on pci1
re0: Using Memory Mapping!
re0: Using 1 MSI-X message
re0: ASPM disabled
re0: version:1.97.00
re0: Ethernet address: 68:1d:ef:2d:73:00

This product is covered by one or more of the following patents:
US6,570,884, US6,115,776, and US6,327,625.
re0: Ethernet address: 68:1d:ef:2d:73:00

This 1.97 driver from the pfSense repo is not the latest, but it is good enough for me.

JimBob Indiana

The repo has the 1.98 driver.

knight-of-ni

@jimbob-indiana As you can see from the output, the 1.97 driver was installed, using pfsense repo.

Care to provide any details on how to get the 1.98 driver installed on 23.01?

stephenw10

It doesn't it's 1.97 in the 23.01 repo:

[23.01-RELEASE][root@6100.stevew.lan]/root: pkg search realtek-re-kmod
realtek-re-kmod-197.00         Kernel driver for Realtek PCIe Ethernet Controllers

The 2.7-dev repo now contains 1.98:

[2.7.0-DEVELOPMENT][admin@cedev.stevew.lan]/root: pkg search realtek-re-kmod
realtek-re-kmod-198.00         Kernel driver for Realtek PCIe Ethernet Controllers

There is no easy way to get the 1.98 driver in 23.01. The driver seems far more tightly tied to the kernel version in FreeBSD14.

Steve

JimBob Indiana

@knight-of-ni

Since there’s nothing really different in performance between the drivers I’d not even consider figuring out a way to install in IF its not included in the repo….

knight-of-ni

@jimbob-indiana I completely agree. You made a claim that the 1.98 drivers were available, despite evidence to the contrary. I was simply trying to get you to explain how you came to that conclusion.

stephenw10

I assume he was referring to the upstream repo.

Yeah at this point 1.98 has nothing likely to make much difference over 1.97. But it available in 2.7 so if you really need something from that you can test a 2.7 image first.

JimBob Indiana

@knight-of-ni Did I offer how I got there are great knight keeper of ni?