Chelsio T422-CR
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I recently purchased a Chelsio T422-CR card and added it to my pfSense box. I needed a SPF+ card for fiber that I am installing.
I was able to configure the card by adding an interface in pfSense and VLANs to the interface.
I thought that everything was going well until I rebooted. After rebooting I was greeted by a message the icxgbe2 interface was in my configuration but not found. I rolled back to my previous config file. After much troubleshooting, I determined that I could add the interface, it would connect and work fine but after rebooting it would not come back up properly during startup.
I've found some documentation that indicated I should add t4fw_cfg_load="YES" and/or if_cxgbe_load="YES" to the loader.conf.local. I did so, but was greeted with abother failure during boot. "efi_check_space: unable to expand staging area". This occurred immediately after pfsense lauded t4fw_cfg.. I removed this from the config and was able to boot pfesense again.
I've reached a dead end where I can't figure out how to get pfSense to load after I've added it to the config. It seems to work fine before rebooting, but obviously I will need to reboot some day in the future.
I've been searching the forum , googling all day but can't find a solution. Any ideas would be appreciated!
Thank you,
Ryan -
@vc6SfV8 Did you try this:
https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/hardware/tune.html#chelsio-cxgbe-4-cards -
Yes, I tried all of the cxgbe settings listed on that page. No luck, thank you though.
It doesn't seem like any of those were related to card 'startup', just tuning settings/features.
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You shouldn't need to any loader values for a cxgbe NIC.
Do you see errors in the boot log when it fails to add the NIC?
Is it only cxgbe2 that is lost? The other three NICs on the card are still shown?
Does it reboot OK if you do not have an SPF module inserted?
Steve
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Only two of the interfaces on the card are SPF+, the same issue occurred with both. I can add the interface in pfSense, it works, I reboot it's missing and I have to roll back to the prior config in order to boot successfully.
I've only tested with the two SPF+ ports, same issue with both. When I reboot, it doesn't 'see' all four of the interfaces.
If I reboot and don't have the interface added in pfSense, it boots and shows up fine - I can add it, SPF transceiver inserted or not.
It is almost like it detects and loads the card after booting is complete and not while it is starting up.
In the OS Boot log, I do see the device load. I don't really see any errors but just before it loads these two lines are present.
pci2: <network, ethernet> at device 0.3 (no driver attached)
pci2: <network, ethernet> at device 0.2 (no driver attached)Not sure if there are any other logs that might help.
Ryan
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Hmm, and did you try rebooting without the SFP module inserted?
If it shows cxgbe2 being created at boot then it must be detaching before it reaches the interface check. Do you see that happening in the boot log?
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After I add the interface or add it to a VLAN, I can't boot (so I can't see the boot log.) I receive the config error and have to restore to the previous config file to boot again.
I will test it out a bit more this evening to see what I can capture when it happens.
Ryan
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You can still see the boot before the config mismatch though?
If you break out of that you can copy the dmesg output to a file to review after rebooting.
