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    Introducing Netgate Nexus: Multi-Instance Management at Your Fingertips.

    gve -- Ethernet driver for Google Virtual NIC (gVNIC) support

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    • T Offline
      thiagok
      last edited by

      Hi everyone,

      I'm currently deploying pfSense 2.8.1-RELEASE on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). While the base system is now moving towards FreeBSD 14, I've noticed that the if_gve driver (Google Virtual NIC - gVNIC) is currently missing from the kernel and /boot/kernel/.

      As Google Cloud introduces newer VM families (like C3, C4, and H3), the gVNIC interface is becoming a hard requirement, as these instances no longer support the traditional VirtIO (vtnet) adapter. Additionally, the gve driver offers significant performance improvements and lower latency, which is critical for enterprise workloads like SAP S/4HANA migrations.

      I've verified that the driver is already available in the FreeBSD 14.x upstream (man page: gve(4)), but it seems it hasn't been included in the pfSense custom kernel yet.

      Questions:

      Are there any plans to incorporate the if_gve.ko module or compile it into the kernel for the next pfSense CE/Plus releases?

      Is there a recommended way to manually load this driver in the current version without breaking system integrity?

      This support would be a game-changer for those of us running high-performance firewalls on GCE.

      Thanks in advance!

      T patient0P 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • T Offline
        thiagok @thiagok
        last edited by

        The driver is already present in the FreeBSD 14 upstream. Here is the official manual page for reference:
        https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=gve&sektion=4&format=html

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        • patient0P Offline
          patient0 @thiagok
          last edited by

          @thiagok compiling the module is not going to be easy. You have to match the running kernel.

          Someone did this for a RealTek network card module, you can try replicate it for gve(4).

          https://forum.netgate.com/topic/197649/package-realtek-re-kmod198-for-pfsense-2-8-0-amd64

          Btw: 2.8.1 CE is running on FreeBSD 15-CURRENT, see pfsense versions.

          Btw2: VLANs are not supported with the gve(4) driver according to the man page.

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          • stephenw10S Offline
            stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
            last edited by

            Open a feature request: https://redmine.pfsense.org/

            Though it's likely to appear in a Plus build first.

            T 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • T Offline
              thiagok @stephenw10
              last edited by

              @stephenw10

              I just have opened, I also have plus installations too, it would be great to have this support.

              https://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/16801

              Cheers,

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
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