Jetway Triple GIGA LAN Add-on Board (AD3RTLANG)
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I've recently aquired rackmount systems setup with a Jetway motherboard. The motherboard has the new Via C7 and a single onboard 10/100 ethernet port (Jetway J7F2WE1G5D).
I also installed the Triple GIGA Lan 'add on' board. Therein lies my problem. pfSense by default does not recognise the network interfaces, showing them as unknown PCI network devices with no driver attached (in dmesg). So only the single, on-board network interface works. (And apparently something called Ethernet-over-Firewire as fwe0 …).
This is the 'add on' board in question:
https://linitx.com/product_info.php?cPath=12_145&products_id=1085According to LinITX.com, these nics are based on the Realtek RTL81108. I have no idea what this chipset is, but it seems reasonable to assume thats its a subset of the RTL8110 family.
According to pfSense's hardware support documentation, this should be supported by the re driver:
The re(4) driver supports RealTek RTL8139C+, RTL8169, RTL8169S and
RTL8110S based Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet adaptersAnd, well, its not working.
I downloaded the latest FreeBSD drivers from Realtek. There is a 'downloads' page that offers the ubiquitous RTL8139 drivers, but going through the products page to the RTL8110S and clicking on the software links brings up a RTL8110S download page, where I was able to download a tar fire targeted at FreeBSD systems. I made this file available at http://www.exosecurity.com/rtl_bsd_drv_v171.tar.
The problem with the available drivers is that they need to be compiled either as a module or statically inside the kernel. Other versions of the RL driver come at least pre-compiled as a .ko module, not this one.
NOTE: This RL driver is different from the 'original' 8139 driver, even though it seems to be the same. It seems to support the conventional 8139 boards plus a few other chipsets. The name of the module/driver is the same as the 'original' 8139 driver.
My question is this:
1. How do I make this work. Do I setup a 'pfSense' development environment to compile the module?
2. If I compile it as a module, will the Kernel load it even though there might be a different version of the RL driver directly compiled inside the current pfSense Kernel?
3. Whatever I do to make this work, will it break when I update my pfSense installation?Right now I'm stuck with two non-working network daughterboards, so any help would be immensely appreciated.
Regards,
-G
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Maybe worth a try: Do you have any bios settings like pnp os? If so set it to "no" so that the bios assigns ressources to the cards and initializes them.
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Ya, I thought of that but its a Phoenix AWARD Bios and this one, for some reason, doesn't offer that option. The IRC interrupts can be set to PCI Device (which is what they are set to) or Reserved, from the PnP/PCI Configuration, thats about it … :-\
Any other ideas?
Thanks -
G
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I'm checking with Jetway about this.
I've asked them to confirm which driver supports the board.
Nick.
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Thanks! that is extremely appreciated. I really don't know what to do.
-G
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Update:
I've done my own parallel inquiry with Jetway and they directed me to the driver download page where I had already downloaded the RTL8110S driver.
Could it be that this driver is more recent than pfSense's built-in re(4) and that would fix the problem?
If so, what are my options? Are there any docs about compiling your own drivers for pfSense?
-G
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pfsense = freebsd 6.1
so if you find a doc with google for compiling drivers under freebsd 6.1
then it will work with pfsense -
It works!
I installed FreeBSD 6.1 in VirtualPC (I know I know … its just been lying there) and chose the 'Developper' setup. Then I downloaded the driver I was referred to (the RL driver) and half-followed the instructions in order to get me a nice if_rl.ko file.
Since I found the process painful and time consuming, I've included the compiled module and objects with the original module source file, it can be downloaded at :
http://www.exosecurity.com/rtl_bsd_drv_v171-bin.tar.gzOnce this file in untar'ed, all you need to do is go in the rl folder in the archive, copy the if_rl.ko file to /boot/modules or /boot/kernel and add/modify the if_rl entry in /boot/defaults/loader.conf (so that it reads YES). Alternatively, once the module is copied in the right folder you can test it by loading it manually:
pf# kldload if_rl.ko
Hope this helps someone.
-G
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Finally got the reply back from Jetway - they said get the driver from here:
http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=2&PFid=4&Level=5&Conn=4&ProdID=5&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false&Downloads=true
or
http://tinyurl.com/ygo5ag
Hope that helps
Nick.
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It looks to me like this is the same driver that comes with FreeBSD 6.x but just hasn't made it into the mainline release's yet. It doesn't look like this is in 6.2, but maybe 6.3?
I suppose poking the freebsd dev's on the dev mailing list might be in order just to make sure this makes 6.3.
Btw, nice work figuring this out, I just ordered one of these from LogicSupply.
Phylon 7F2WE-1G5 Mini-ITX mainboard 1.5 GHz
Phylon 3x 1Gb LAN module
[AD3RTLANG]It has a RTL8110S-32 set of chips, which according to the 6.2 HW Release Notes 'IS' supported by FreeBSD's built in RE driver.
I'm guessing that the Phylon 3x 10/100 LAN module [AD3RTLANP] with the RTL8100C chips is already supported in FreeBSD 6.1 as it's a bit older chip.
I'll let you know how things turn out. I may try a full FreeBSD install of 6.2 if pfsense doesn't support it out of the box to see if 6.2 already supports it.
I'm considering building a whole bucketload of 1U boxes with these running on compact flash cards for inter-office networking / vpn.
P.S. the Phylon/Jetway boards appear to be basically identical, they're just OEM'd boards and the name varies by country/region.
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P.S. Rumor has it that Sullrich has a new snapshot as of 12-04-06 with a FreeBSD 6.2 build. I'm going to test this on a Phylon 7F2WE-1G5 with the 3 port gigabit module and report back.
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Even newer snapshot: http://www.pfsense.com/~sullrich/1.0.1-SNAPSHOT-12-06-2006/
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Snapshot 12-08-06 with FreeBSD 6.2 works 'out of the box' on the board I have with the 3x1000BT addon card. My configuration is a 1.5 GHz VIA C7 Processor, with 1024 MB of DDR2 533 Kingston Ram, with a 1GB Kingston Elite Pro 50x compact flash card, on a Travla C137B with a 120W power supply. I also have 2 1000BT Intel Nic's as backup in the rig.
I hammered the hardware all night with about 20k connections per second and full throughput and didn't experience any problems on the realtek nic's. Apparently Realtek got the updates into FreeBSD 6.2.
Anyways, for those that care, the Phylon 7F2WE-1G5 Mini-ITX Mainboard with Fan 7F2WE‑1G5 and the Phylon 3x 1Gb LAN module [AD3RTLANG] Add-on module for the Phylon 7F2WE series mainboards, works out of the box with Snapshot 12-08-06.
Thanks Sullrich for your constant dedication to the project.
Well, time to go build a few production scale boxes in 1U travla rackmounts….
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Yay! Glad to hear its working.
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Thank you gbelanger! Providing the compiled driver really made my day and saved me a lot of work!
Using your precompiled driver worked like a charm on my new Jetway Board. -
SatireWolf -
Does your card still work with the latest snapshots?
I have a Jetway board with the AD3RTLANG daughterboard, and the only way I can get it working is manually installing the driver still - 6.2 snapshots don't seem to work for me.
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I'm a Jetway reseller in Canada and find out that there is at least two AD3RTLANG board using different Realtek chip. 1.0.1 release works fine with the first gen RTL8110S-32 and not the RTL8110SC
Martin
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I haven't had a chance to test with the january era snapshots but I will.
I have a cloned system setup in a Travla 1U rackmount with the exact same hardware that I'm building. I'll let you know if the latest snapshots are working.
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I haven't followed up much, sorry.
My 'manually' compiled driver still does the job just fine here. I too am making 1U's with travla boxes, except I use the C146 case. Its bigger but it looks alot meaner. I also like the spring-loaded ComptactFlash reader in the front.
Note that the JetWay boards are different from the Via boards and that the C146 doesnt come with the right IOShield to accomodate the triple-lan daughterboard. My distributor has overcome this issue by having custom IOShields engineered. If anybody needs some, I can put you in contact.
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Who is your distributor for this stuff? I've been looking for custom I/O shields for the Travla cases. Thanks!
Chad