Pfsense 2.6 to 2.7 upgrade - remove Realtek driver?

tzalmaves

Hello All,

I updated from 2.6.0 to 2.7.0. With 2.6.0, I installed a driver for Realtek (see here).

Now that I have upgraded, should I remove the reference to the driver in /boot/loader.conf.local ? Since the OS version is different, I would think trying to use the now older driver might be a problem.

nimrod

If it aint broke, dont fix it.

stephenw10

The realtek kmod driver pkg is in the 2.7 repo so it will have upgraded to that. Which is correct.

tzalmaves

@stephenw10 OK, so are you saying I should remove the reference in /boot/loader.conf.local to the version of the driver I copied onto the system when it was running 2.6.0?

stephenw10

No, that is still required if you wish to use the kmod Realtek driver.

burnbrighter

For those of us desperately trying to get the Realtek driver to work with 2.6 - where can we find the 1.97 driver, which seems to be the only one which works. Sorry for threadjacking, but I'm desperate! I would switch to 2.7, but my Intel X550-T2 stopped negotiating 10GBe - dropped down to 1GBe.

stephenw10

Like this: https://forum.netgate.com/post/1100295

That won't help you with an ixgbe NIC though.

Steve

burnbrighter

@stephenw10 OMyGosh - thank you! That was the bit of information I had been searching for all weekend. This worked! I finally have the card working on 2.6.

That won't help you with an ixgbe NIC though.
Yes of course! I was more asking if the X550-T2 issue with down negotiation had been solved in 2.7 yet. 2.5GBe stopped working for me and I could only negotiate 1GBe.

Thanks again!

tzalmaves

@stephenw10 I'm sorry, I'm confused. I think you're saying that 2.7 comes with an install of the kmod driver. If I've hand copied the kmod driver to the Pfsense computer at some random location, and /boot/loader.conf.local is pointing to that driver in that directory, won't the OS at boot time load my hand-copied driver, not the one installed with 2.7?

tzalmaves

The driver that I installed in 2.6 must be version 1.98, unless the 2.7 install somehow updated it:

re0: <Realtek PCIe GbE Family Controller> port 0xe000-0xe0ff mem 0x81300000-0x81300fff,0xa0100000-0xa0103fff at device 0.0 on pci1
re0: Using Memory Mapping!
re0: Using 1 MSI-X message
re0: version:1.98.00
re0: Ethernet address: 00:01:2e:70:73:d6

stephenw10

The location of the module installed by the package is the same. You should not have to change the loader values.

The version of the pkg in 2.7 is 1.98.