Intel E810-C drivers

[salexandrov]

Drivers for E810-C NIC are included into FreeBSD distribution (if_ice AND ice_ddp <- this is really important to handle hardware features), can those be included into distribution any time soon?

[stephenw10]

It's included in 24.03:

[24.03-BETA][admin@5100-2.stevew.lan]/root: ls -l /boot/kernel/ice*
-r--r--r--  1 root wheel 707072 Mar 14 04:14 /boot/kernel/ice_ddp.ko
-r--r--r--  1 root wheel  19152 Mar 14 04:14 /boot/kernel/icee.ko

[salexandrov]

@stephenw10 said in Intel E810-C drivers:

24.03

24.03 is pfSence PLUS, not CE if I understand correctly. Current CE is 2.7.2. Please advise and thank you.

[stephenw10]

24.03 is Plus, yes. That will be the next release after the module was added.

[salexandrov]

@stephenw10 So I have to wait for CE 2.8.X release which could happen in 3 years from now? Or 2.7.3 could be released earlier? ETA, please? Thank you very much!

[stephenw10]

There is no ETA for 2.8 yet. If you upgrade to Plus though 24.03 dev snapshots are available today.

[salexandrov]

@stephenw10 Well, I currently operate version 2.7.2 CE on my home setup within a virtual machine. Am I understanding correctly that your suggestion entails purchasing a $129 annual subscription for a single kernel module that is already integrated within the FreeBSD distribution, thus available free of charge? I appreciate your clarification on this matter. Thank you kindly for your assistance.

[stephenw10]

No I'm saying if you need that today it is available in Plus snapshots. I wouldn't expect a 24.03 kernel module to load in 2.7.2, the kernels are too different.

[salexandrov]

@stephenw10 Appreciate your reply. Both current 23.09.01 PLUS and 2.7.2 CE are based on FreeBSD 14-CURRENT, successor of FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE, which has ICE kernel modules "by default":

freebsd-version

14.0-RELEASE

ls -la /boot/kernel/ | grep ice

-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 705088 Feb 18 12:18 ice_ddp.ko
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 19136 Nov 10 04:02 icee.ko
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 607432 Feb 18 12:18 if_ice.ko
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 39352 Nov 10 04:03 ng_device.ko

What was the reason(s) to drop those off pfSense distributions? Both Plus and CE?

Thank you.

[stephenw10]

It's not actually built on the FreeBSD 14 release. The modules we build for pfSense have always been a subset of the available modules. It doesn't make sense to build a lot of those for a firewall/router. New modules are added to our build list and ice_ddp wasn't on it at that time.

[salexandrov]

@stephenw10 This is not entirely correct.
OPNSense 24.1.X was based on FreeBSD 13.2-RELEASE-p9 - way before FreeBSD 14 released.
Guess what? I does includes ICE DDP.

freebsd-version

13.2-RELEASE-p9

ls -la /boot/kernel |grep ice

-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 705024 Jan 25 06:16 ice_ddp.ko
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 15312 Jan 25 06:16 icee.ko
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 604728 Jan 25 06:16 if_ice.ko
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root wheel 17384 Jan 25 06:16 ng_device.ko

Please advise and thank you.

[stephenw10]

The module was not on our build list when 2.7.2 was built. It is in fact available in 23.09.1.

[salexandrov]

@stephenw10 Means, (I'm sorry to say) you intentionally dropped ICE DDP from both PLUS (you said "included in 24.03" earlier) and CE released on 2023-12-07 (https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/releases/versions.html#pfsense-ce-software). Correct? I can not test PLUS because this is CE related forum, and I had a hope. Thank you.

[stephenw10]

I had 24.03 open at the time to check but the module is also in 23.09.1.

We build a limited selection of kernel modules and update them as required. This one happened to not be on the list in 2.7.X.

There's already a feature request open for it: https://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/15174

[salexandrov]

@stephenw10 I'm afraid that's not entirely accurate. After the pfSense 2.7.2 installation process, I observed that the if_ice and ice_ddp modules, which were present in the /boot/kernel directory of the 2.7.2 ISO image, are no longer available. This could potentially be a glitch or a bug in the installation procedure. Following the transfer of these modules from the ISO to the pfSense installation and the addition of corresponding "tunable variables" (if_ice_load and ice_ddp_load), along with a reboot, all functionalities are now operational. With DDP loaded, I now have 16 Tx and Rx queues instead of just one. Thank you.

[stephenw10]

Hmm, well that's interesting! I would not have expected any difference in the modules built there. Well that's an easy solution at least.

[salexandrov]

@stephenw10 Well, 2.7.2 and 23.09.1 have the same kernel version, so the both versions should have the same set of compiled drivers. BTW, 2.6 CE also has ice_ddp on ISO, but not after installation ;)