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    New Alix board for 2013

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    • dotdashD
      dotdash
      last edited by

      @phil.davis:

      I would like some feedback from anyone who has put the nanoBSD image (2.1.1 or 2.2) onto an SD card and run it. I guess you can put an SD card into a Windows device and write it with phydiskwrite in the same way as a CF card? And then put it in the APU, select the correct boot device, boot, set the interface from the console, and go?

      I haven't put one into production, but I'm testing using nano (2.1.1-pre i386) off an SD card. Used physdiskwrite and a card reader, then put the card in the apu. You have to set the cam.boot.delay as mentioned in previous posts. The apu will boot automatically from any storage it finds, there should be no reason to get into the console.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • N
        nscheffer
        last edited by

        Just to correct the pfSense and APU support :

        • i was new with the APU and pfSense product and system
        • the main trick is the serial console speed change between the APU and pfSense to know (115K vs 9600)

        For the rest pfSense on the APU is working like a charm and i plan to purchase more APU for different locations…
        APU + pfSense is a win-win solution : great work !

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        • P
          phil.davis
          last edited by

          @GruensFroeschli:

          So you're not refering to this one:
          http://pcengines.ch/msata16a.htm

          Because from the image they are different brands.
          The one from pcengines certainly works. (albeit the mentioned dma warnings when the board is overloaded).

          That PC Engines reference has a part S238 and so does the NetGate store. The PC Engines picture has 1 memory chip soldered on 1 side of the board, and the other on the reverse side. The NetGate picture has them both soldered on the same side - maybe it depends how the production supervisor is feeling on the day? :)

          PC Engines warns "Not compatible with Sophos UTM", NetGate warns "Not compatible with Sophos UTM or pfSense".

          As the Greek philosopher Isosceles used to say, "There are 3 sides to every triangle."
          If I helped you, then help someone else - buy someone a gift from the INF catalog http://secure.inf.org/gifts/usd/

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          • nesenseN
            nesense
            last edited by

            @GruensFroeschli:

            • 50 concurrent iperf connections from PC1 to PC2
            • 50 concurrent iperf connections from PC2 to PC1

            Could you please show us your iperf command options so I could test it using a different brand of mSATA? I'm using Kingston SSDNow SMS200S3/120G and I never got any DMA errors using it even when I ran iperf.

            I used to get the same DMA errors a lot on a  x79 Chipset/LGA2011 CPU with Kingston SSDNow V300 Series SV300S37A/240G Drive connected to a SATA 6.0 Gbps port and running as squid AUFS cache. after changing it to diskd I rarely get them ever again. I also changed vfs.read_max=32 to vfs.read_max=128 and kern.ipc.nmbclusters to a value of 32768 but these two by themselves weren't enough.

            I'm guessing it all has to do with drive & port transfer rate, but why would iperf saturate the drive in the first place? the msata16a is SATA II only (and performs lower than that) but the APU board ports should be using SATA III  6.0 Gbps according to AMD docs.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • GruensFroeschliG
              GruensFroeschli
              last edited by

              Don't have the exact command-history (i'm at home, test was done at office).

              However it was something like:
              server PC1: iperf -s -i 10 | grep "[SUM]"
              client PC1: iperf -i 10 -t 99999 -P 50 -c 10.0.42.2 | grep "[SUM]"
              server PC2: iperf -s
              client PC2: iperf -t 99999 -P 50 -c 10.0.42.237

              We do what we must, because we can.

              Asking questions the smart way: http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

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              • J
                judex
                last edited by

                My APU.1C only shows 3 Gb/s

                ad4: 15258MB <supersspeed s328="" 16gb="" v4629=""> at ata2-master UDMA100 SATA 3Gb/s</supersspeed>

                Does anyone know what that ZFS Warning tells me in dmesg? "Expect unstable behavior" sounds not that good.

                Trying to mount root from ufs:/dev/ad4s1a
ZFS NOTICE: Prefetch is disabled by default if less than 4GB of RAM is present;
            to enable, add "vfs.zfs.prefetch_disable=0" to /boot/loader.conf.
ZFS WARNING: Recommended minimum kmem_size is 512MB; expect unstable behavior.
             Consider tuning vm.kmem_size and vm.kmem_size_max
             in /boot/loader.conf.

                I already set

                vm.kmem_size="512000000"
vm.kmem_size_max="768000000"

                in /boot/loader.conf.local but get the warning anyway.

                Greets, Jud3x

                2.1-RELEASE (amd64)
                built on Wed Sep 11 18:17:48 EDT 2013
                FreeBSD 8.3-RELEASE-p11

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                • D
                  doktornotor Banned
                  last edited by

                  ZFS is completely off-topic, plus not used at all… someone perhaps might mute the stupid noise during boot.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • nesenseN
                    nesense
                    last edited by

                    Running iperf with GruensFroeschli's commands:

                    server PC1: iperf -s -i 10
                    client PC1: iperf -i 10 -t 99999 -P 50 -c 10.0.42.2

                    [  4]  0.0-10.0 sec   533 MBytes   448 Mbits/sec
[  4] 10.0-20.0 sec   557 MBytes   467 Mbits/sec
[  4] 20.0-30.0 sec   518 MBytes   435 Mbits/sec
[  4] 30.0-40.0 sec   525 MBytes   441 Mbits/sec
[  4] 40.0-50.0 sec   525 MBytes   440 Mbits/sec
[  4] 50.0-60.0 sec   525 MBytes   440 Mbits/sec
[  4] 60.0-70.0 sec   530 MBytes   445 Mbits/sec
[  4] 70.0-80.0 sec   527 MBytes   442 Mbits/sec
[  4] 80.0-90.0 sec   584 MBytes   490 Mbits/sec
...

                    top showing this while iperf is running (client is on re0):

                    
   PID USERNAME PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE   C   TIME   WCPU COMMAND

   11 root     -68    -     0K   304K RUN     0   3:26 66.99% [intr{irq256: re0}]
   11 root     -68    -     0K   304K CPU0    0   1:46 31.98% [intr{irq258: re2}]

                    no DMA errors/warnings at all.

                    @judex:

                    My APU.1C only shows 3 Gb/s

                    ad4: 15258MB <supersspeed s328="" 16gb="" v4629=""> at ata2-master UDMA100 SATA 3Gb/s</supersspeed>

                    This is what I'm seeing on mine:

                    $ dmesg | grep SATA
atapci0: <ati 800="" ixp700="" sata300="" controller="">port 0x4020-0x4027,0x4040-0x4043,0x4028-0x402f,0x4044-0x4047,0x4000-0x400f mem 0xfeb04000-0xfeb043ff at device 17.0 on pci0
ad4: 114473MB <kingston sms200s3120g="" 507abbf0="">at ata2-master UDMA100 SATA 6Gb/s</kingston></ati>

                    Here's the confusing part:

                    SATA300 is  300 MB/s (3Gbps)
                    UDMA100 is 100 MB/s
                    but then it states SATA 6Gbps at the end…

                    difference between AHCI and legacy IDE should give you around 15% performance boost not much more so not sure what is wrong here.

                    Is there a way to benchmark drives under pfSense?

                    Thanks.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • ?
                      Guest
                      last edited by

                      @doktornotor:

                      ZFS is completely off-topic, plus not used at all… someone perhaps might mute the stupid noise during boot.

                      I've actually considered making it more, rather than less present in pfSense.

                      But go ahead, keep on keepin' on about things.

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • W
                        watercooled
                        last edited by

                        @nesense:

                        Is there a way to benchmark drives under pfSense?

                        Well if nothing else you could just dd to null to get an idea of sequential transfer speed.

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                        • D
                          doktornotor Banned
                          last edited by

                          @gonzopancho:

                          @doktornotor:

                          ZFS is completely off-topic, plus not used at all… someone perhaps might mute the stupid noise during boot.

                          I've actually considered making it more, rather than less present in pfSense.

                          But go ahead, keep on keepin' on about things.

                          Merely pointing out there's a noisy, scary, confusing, misleading warning making people do completely unnecessary "tweaks" .

                          As for making it more present - not interested in "cool factor" stuff. This is a firewall/router and the thing eats RAM for lunch. Geez.  ::)

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • J
                            judex
                            last edited by

                            Not that I would need blazing speeds on a pfSense router, but today I tested SSD throughput on the APU for the above mentioned

                            ad4: 15258MB <supersspeed s328="" 16gb="" v4629=""> at ata2-master UDMA100 SATA 3Gb/s</supersspeed>

                            with

                            dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/delme bs=12M count=100; rm /tmp/delme

                            and I got:

                            100+0 records in
100+0 records out
1258291200 bytes transferred in 47.450329 secs (26518071 bytes/sec)

                            which is really bad.

                            2.1-RELEASE (amd64)
                            built on Wed Sep 11 18:17:48 EDT 2013
                            FreeBSD 8.3-RELEASE-p11

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • W
                              watercooled
                              last edited by

                              What SSD is that?

                              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • J
                                judex
                                last edited by

                                That is the one sold by PC Engines

                                http://www.pcengines.ch/msata16a.htm

                                I read a review of the APU and this SSD and the guy at ipfire,org got the same bad results. He also states, that it is a cheap SSD and would buy another. http://planet.ipfire.org/post/pc-engines-apu1c-a-review

                                Greets, Jud3x

                                2.1-RELEASE (amd64)
                                built on Wed Sep 11 18:17:48 EDT 2013
                                FreeBSD 8.3-RELEASE-p11

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • W
                                  watercooled
                                  last edited by

                                  Yeah that's just down the the SSD itself rather than the board then, and it's pretty much what I'd expect for an SSD in that price range.

                                  Read speed is far better than write speed though, and TBH I'm not sure what you'd want to be constantly writing at high speed to a small SSD like this for anyway, not least because of the limited write cycles of NAND.

                                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                  • S
                                    SpankIt
                                    last edited by

                                    Anyone else having issues bridging the LAN interfaces? I get intermittent connectivity when I try and I can see the physical connection dropping.  It should be noted that as soon as I remove the bridge I no longer get connection drops.

                                    LAN: bridge0
                                    MGMT: re1
                                    WIFI: ath0
                                    WIRED: re2

                                    BRIDGE0 Members: WIFI, WIRED

                                    System Log:

                                    
Mar 30 19:13:03 	syslogd: kernel boot file is /boot/kernel/kernel
Mar 30 19:13:05 	php: rc.linkup: Hotplug event detected for WIRED(opt3) but ignoring since interface is configured with static IP ( )
Mar 30 19:13:05 	check_reload_status: rc.newwanip starting re2
Mar 30 19:13:08 	php: rc.newwanip: rc.newwanip: Informational is starting re2.
Mar 30 19:13:08 	php: rc.newwanip: rc.newwanip: on (IP address: ) (interface: opt3) (real interface: re2).
Mar 30 19:13:08 	php: rc.newwanip: rc.newwanip: Failed to update opt3 IP, restarting...
Mar 30 19:13:08 	check_reload_status: Configuring interface opt3
Mar 30 19:13:11 	php: rc.interfaces_wan_configure: The command '/sbin/ifconfig 're2' inet delete' returned exit code '1', the output was 'ifconfig: ioctl (SIOCDIFADDR): Can't assign requested address'
Mar 30 19:13:11 	check_reload_status: Linkup starting re2
Mar 30 19:13:11 	kernel: re2: link state changed to DOWN
Mar 30 19:13:13 	check_reload_status: Linkup starting re2
Mar 30 19:13:13 	kernel: re2: link state changed to UP
Mar 30 19:13:14 	php: rc.linkup: Hotplug event detected for WIRED(opt3) but ignoring since interface is configured with static IP ( )
Mar 30 19:13:16 	php: rc.linkup: Hotplug event detected for WIRED(opt3) but ignoring since interface is configured with static IP ( )
Mar 30 19:13:16 	check_reload_status: rc.newwanip starting re2
Mar 30 19:13:18 	php: rc.newwanip: rc.newwanip: Informational is starting re2.
Mar 30 19:13:18 	php: rc.newwanip: rc.newwanip: on (IP address: ) (interface: opt3) (real interface: re2).
Mar 30 19:13:18 	php: rc.newwanip: rc.newwanip: Failed to update opt3 IP, restarting...
Mar 30 19:13:24 	php: rc.interfaces_wan_configure: The command '/sbin/ifconfig 're2' inet delete' returned exit code '1', the output was 'ifconfig: ioctl (SIOCDIFADDR): Can't assign requested address'
Mar 30 19:13:24 	check_reload_status: Linkup starting re2
Mar 30 19:13:24 	kernel: re2: link state changed to DOWN
Mar 30 19:13:26 	check_reload_status: Linkup starting re2
Mar 30 19:13:26 	kernel: re2: link state changed to UP
Mar 30 19:13:26 	php: rc.linkup: Hotplug event detected for WIRED(opt3) but ignoring since interface is configured with static IP ( )
Mar 30 19:13:29 	php: rc.linkup: Hotplug event detected for WIRED(opt3) but ignoring since interface is configured with static IP ( )
Mar 30 19:13:29 	check_reload_status: rc.newwanip starting re2
Mar 30 19:13:32 	php: rc.newwanip: rc.newwanip: Informational is starting re2.
Mar 30 19:13:32 	php: rc.newwanip: rc.newwanip: on (IP address: ) (interface: opt3) (real interface: re2).
Mar 30 19:13:32 	php: rc.newwanip: rc.newwanip: Failed to update opt3 IP, restarting...
Mar 30 19:13:32 	check_reload_status: Configuring interface opt3
Mar 30 19:13:34 	php: rc.interfaces_wan_configure: The command '/sbin/ifconfig 're2' inet delete' returned exit code '1', the output was 'ifconfig: ioctl (SIOCDIFADDR): Can't assign requested address'
Mar 30 19:13:35 	check_reload_status: Linkup starting re2
Mar 30 19:13:35 	kernel: re2: link state changed to DOWN
Mar 30 19:13:37 	kernel: re2: link state changed to UP
Mar 30 19:13:37 	check_reload_status: Linkup starting re2
Mar 30 19:13:37 	php: rc.linkup: Hotplug event detected for WIRED(opt3) but ignoring since interface is configured with static IP ( )
Mar 30 19:13:39 	php: rc.linkup: Hotplug event detected for WIRED(opt3) but ignoring since interface is configured with static IP ( )
Mar 30 19:13:39 	check_reload_status: rc.newwanip starting re2
Mar 30 19:13:42 	php: rc.newwanip: rc.newwanip: Informational is starting re2.
Mar 30 19:13:42 	php: rc.newwanip: rc.newwanip: on (IP address: ) (interface: opt3) (real interface: re2).
Mar 30 19:13:42 	php: rc.newwanip: rc.newwanip: Failed to update opt3 IP, restarting...
Mar 30 19:13:47 	php: rc.interfaces_wan_configure: The command '/sbin/ifconfig 're2' inet delete' returned exit code '1', the output was 'ifconfig: ioctl (SIOCDIFADDR): Can't assign requested address'
Mar 30 19:13:47 	check_reload_status: Linkup starting re2
Mar 30 19:13:47 	kernel: re2: link state changed to DOWN
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                                    • stephenw10S
                                      stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                                      last edited by

                                      SpankIt, are you using 2.1?
                                      This has been fixed in 2.1.1. There is a long thread about it somewhere.

                                      Steve

                                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                      • M
                                        marama
                                        last edited by

                                        Hi there!
                                        I have an issue with APU1C and pfsense 2.1, the LiveCD is not booting. Here are more details:
                                        Booting stops after "Starting the BTX loader" message.

                                        http://pcengines.info/forums/?page=post&id=2ADF62BD-420D-447D-A387-A9B047776417&fid=40251191-FF24-48A8-BB0E-995B04812ADE

                                        Anyone has an idea what's wrong?

                                        Bye

                                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                        • K
                                          keychain
                                          last edited by

                                          Marama,

                                          I didn't try to install from CD, instead I'd recommend to install via USB-Stick. Choose the amd64 memstick-image and follow the instructions to write the image to the stick. Mount it with a running freebsd and append 'console="comconsole" to /boot/loader.conf (don't forget to mount the stick and change the filepath - this is not copy & paste):

                                          $ echo 'console="comconsole"' >> /$USB_MOUNT_POINT/boot/loader.conf

                                          Now you're good to go. Boot from the USB- Stick and pass the following line to the kernel during startup:

                                          $ set kern.cam.boot_delay=10000

                                          Now you can follow the install-scripts as described in various How-To's.

                                          If you want to use an SD-Card, it's even simpler - just follow the instructions from the CF-Card install to the letter, but during first boot pass the

                                          $ set kern.cam.boot_delay=10000

                                          line to the kernel, and everything works as expected. Once booted it's best to add the "kern.cam.boot_delay" statement to /boot/loader.conf. Don't forget to remount the partition before editing, it's readonly per default.

                                          Have fun!

                                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                          • O
                                            ozlecz
                                            last edited by

                                            @dotdash

                                            Interrupt the boot loader.
                                            type-
                                            set kern.cam.boot_delay=10000
                                            boot
                                            After booting add kern.cam.boot_delay=1000 to /boot/loader.conf.local via edit or from console.

                                            sir could you please explain this further? how to do it etc..thanks

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