Making my Znyx ZX346Q nic to work

stephenw10

Hmm. OK. So possibly the card is now talking correctly at the hardware level but the driver is not indicating a connection in some way. Can you get back to the webgui via the WAN? You can disable the firewall entirely to allow that using 'pfctl -d' at the console. Check the Status: Interfaces: page. Does it show a load of errors? Does it show a conection?

Are you using DHCP for the client machine on LAN1? Is it working?

Steve

vishibalo

i am able to access webgui if i assign fxp0 to lan.
Checking Status:Interfaces window shows 0/0 errors on all ports, all show 0/0 in out packets except dc0 (lan4) it shows in/out packets 112/133 (pass) no errors nothing. all show status 'no carrier', im not sure how to see if it show a connection.

as for the DHCP, in the Interfaces:DHCP Leases it shows the IP 192.168.1.130 as online and active and it shows my workstations name. Keep in mind Lan1 is fxp0 port which is my mobo port that was originally known to work (machine was in working order when i started messing with pfsense)

I did run pfctl -d it shows pf disabled, ill try seeing if that changed anything.

I hope this gives you any ideas.

stephenw10

@vishibalo:

all show status 'no carrier', im not sure how to see if it show a connection.

Hmm, well that's not good. Did they have a physical connection when you were looking a this?
If you ssh in and run ifconfig at a the command line you can copy and paste that output here.

What did you have connected to dc0 (lan4) that manged to send/receive some traffic?

I forgot earlier that none of the additional interfaces will have DHCP enabled unless you manually set it in Services: DHCP Server: so you would have to use static IP addresses.

Steve

vishibalo

well, ya, they had nothing pluged in, and dc0 (lan4) i have no idea i honestly dont think anything was. i believe i use statick IPs on all but Wan. If I remember right if i assign wan to any dc interfaces it wont work either, basically the only interface that does everything it should is fxp0 the one that is currently on a mobo. and would i run ssh from webgui? ill look at it in a bit and see if i can figure it out on my own.

and again i greatly appreciate all the help.

i am kind-off glad that i am running in to so many problems with it, i at least will know what to do in a future if it ever starts working.

stephenw10

@vishibalo:

well, ya, they had nothing pluged in

Ok, well connect a client and make sure they're both configured manually at 10/100. Check the output of ifconfig at the console for a change in the status. We already talked about cross-over cables.

To connect via SSH you have to enable it first in the webgui in System: Advanced: Admin access: then connect to it using an SSH client like putty.

Steve

vishibalo

ok so i realized that i never configured WAN port for a manual speed, i did change that. Sadly nothing changed, also i did run ifconfig and have an image of it maybe it can tell you anything.

another thing i do notice is that if i configure wan port to any of the dc0-3 interfaces the interface does not get an IP assigned to it (tried resetting the pfsense box and the modem, no result, or same result to be exact) and again, the physical RJ45 ports show link lights and activity lights when i plug in to them.

Would be nice if everything just worked.

Image.png_thumb

stephenw10

O.k. so two things:
1. You have set the fxp port to 100MbpsFD manually and tht should really be left as autoselect unless you have a good reason not to.
2. The dc3 interface shows that the connection is 'active', it can see that a cable is attached. Since it doesn't have an IP assigned to it I assume you had that assigned as WAN when the screenshot was taken? Have you been able to set the modem interface to 100Mb-FD? If you check the Status: Interfaces: page does it show and packets or errors on dc3?

If you plug other clients in the dc0-2 NICs do they receive IP addresses from pfSense?

Ultimately if you can't set the modem interface you will have to use the fxp NIC as WAN but obviously you can only do that once you can talk to one of the dc NICs.

Steve

vishibalo

the first part was done just to see if that would change anything, I will change the
fxp0 port to auto, since it works fine

the second part, yes dc3 was set up as WAN I just picked the last port on the card, I did set all the interfaces for manual 100baseTX fd. In the status, interface window, there are some packets shown 221/33 (23kb/3kb) so minimal and no errors 0/0, that's after about 30 min of looking around.

as for plugin in to other interfaces, the webgui shows status as "up" but again, no real traffic through, minimal packets in and out…
(i plugged in my laptop to check that out)
as to weather or not they receive IPs, im not sure how to even check, i know that if i assign dc0 to 192.168.1.1 i cant get on to webgui through it, and in the end i do want fxp0 to be my WAN port, that is as soon as i can get the other 4 running

stephenw10

If the NIC were in fact still completely inactive I would expect to see some packets going out but not any received.
If you have setup a dhcp server on dc0 at 192.168.4.20 and when you connect a client to it it receives an address then the NIC is working and the problem lies elsewhere.

You definitely proved your cross-over cables with some thing else?

Steve

vishibalo

im not sure how to set up a dhcp server on dc0, do you mean make it in to a WAN port or activate dhcp in the interface menue in gui. Not sure what im reading here
@stephenw10:

If you have setup a dhcp server on dc0 at 192.168.4.20

i basically dont understand the question or what i would do to answer that, troubleshoot that.

as for the crossover cable i am at a bit of a loss, do i need to use a crossover cable? my workstation has 2 gigabit ports, on the other hand the znyx card has 4 10/100baseTX ports, would my gigabit port take care of the crossover problem or do i still need to use a crossover cable for the card, to access my webgui via fxp0 im using a straight through cable, if i do have to have a crossover cable, i will have one made and tested.

stephenw10

Ok so you have dc0 assigned as LAN4 (?) with an IP address of 192.168.4.20/24.
The pfSense box will not act as a DHCP server on that interface unless to configure it to do so.
Go to Services: DHCP Server: and click on the LAN4 tab. Now check the 'enable DHCP server' box and enter a valid range. For example: 192.168.4.50-192.168.4.100. Click save and apply.

You wouldn't normally need a cross over cable since your Gigabit interface are almost certainly auto-MDX. However if you have manually specified 100MbpsFD (disabling auto-negotiation) are they still auto-MDX? I don't know. If you had two 100Mbps NICs you would need to use a cross-over cable. It's not certain whether or not you might need one so try both if you have them. Normally you would not see any link lights if the cable is wrong though.

Steve

vishibalo

Ok, I did as instructed, I set up dc0 as per example, i pluged my laptop to pfsense box, and checked the network, it did get an IP (although it is completely different from the pfsense IP 169.254.xx.xx) also mentions that it is a self assigned IP amd will not be able to connect to internet. as for packages, it did show minimal transfer in and out.

also I have a question, what is the point of setting up a LAN port as a DHCP server?

stephenw10

Like you found 169.254.X.X are self assigned IPs. That is done when the dhcp client, in a Windows box, can't find a DHCP server. So it was not able to talk to the pfSense box at all. :(

@vishibalo:

what is the point of setting up a LAN port as a DHCP server?

If you have a DHCP server running on your LAN interface then you can connect almost any client machine and it will just work. That includes all types of computer but also printers, set-top boxes etc.

We may be getting close to the end of the road here. It seems odd that you are seeing link lights but no data is flowing. Do the lights you're seeing make sense? Are they showing 100MbpsFD? One thing you could try is to run a packet capture on, say, dc0 and the connect the client. Then we could see what packets are being sent/received.

Steve

vishibalo

Ok so something I was looking at, I don't know if it means anything or matters, but my machine recognizes the NIC interfaces as dc(4), while I was looking at HCL, it lists that card under de(4) driver support. ZNYX ZX3xx. Does that change anything? Is there something wrong with my machine? or my install?

stephenw10

Hmm, well it's at least unexpected. Reading through the complete thread on the freebsd mailing list I linked to earlier they exepcted it to be the de(4) driver too.
Please give the output of:

pciconf -lv | grep 20000

Another suggestion in the FreeBSD thread was that the PHY is in fact unsupported so it remains in whatever it's default mode is. You might try setting your client machine to whatever modes it can and see it that connects (10Mbps FD, 100Mbps HD etc).

@http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=de&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=FreeBSD+10.0-RELEASE&arch=default&format=html:

Some cards are explicitly programmed to a particular media type by a set-up utility and are not changeable.

Steve

vishibalo

@stephenw10:

Hmm, well it's at least unexpected. Reading through the complete thread on the freebsd mailing list I linked to earlier they exepcted it to be the de(4) driver too.
Please give the output of:
pciconf -lv | grep 20000
Another suggestion in the FreeBSD thread was that the PHY is in fact unsupported so it remains in whatever it's default mode is. You might try setting your client machine to whatever modes it can and see it that connects (10Mbps FD, 100Mbps HD etc).

@http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=de&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=FreeBSD+10.0-RELEASE&arch=default&format=html:

Some cards are explicitly programmed to a particular media type by a set-up utility and are not changeable.

I was looking at that thread a while back and when i looked up ZNYX website for product description, they mention.

Channel Speeds Ethernet/Fast Ethernet: 10/100 or 20/200 per channel in full-duplex
mode (IEEE Auto Negotiation)

this is what it mentions under the channel speeds, im not sure if that means because its under auto negotiation that I have to set it to 10/100 because I'm setting both sides on manual or if there is anything else.
I will play around with it trying to set it to other speeds to see if that yields any results, as for now I still don't understand why it pulls the card under a different driver.

Attached is a image of pciconf -lv hopefully that will give you some ideas.

![pciconf -lv.png](/public/imported_attachments/1/pciconf -lv.png)
![pciconf -lv.png_thumb](/public/imported_attachments/1/pciconf -lv.png_thumb)

stephenw10

Ok, so the chips used in the card are given as 0x00191011. 1011 is the PCI vendoir ID for DEC and 0019 is the 21143 NIC. That is listed as a supported model in the dc(4) driver:

@http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/release/8.3.0/sys/dev/dc/if_dcreg.h?revision=234063&view=markup:

/*

DEC PCI vendor ID
*/
#define DC_VENDORID_DEC 0x1011

/*

DEC/Intel 21143 PCI device ID
#define DC_DEVICEID_21143 0x0019

That same chip is also listed by the de(4) driver though here it's listed as a 21142:
@http://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/release/8.3.0/sys/dev/de/dc21040reg.h?revision=234063&view=markup:

#define DEC_VENDORID 0x1011
#define CHIPID_21040 0x0002
#define CHIPID_21140 0x0009
#define CHIPID_21041 0x0014
#define CHIPID_21142 0x0019

Can you see what chip it's actually using?

Interestingly looking at the build instructions for the Znyx FreeBSD driver, now very out of date, it says you must remove the dc and de drivers from the kernel. Presumably this is because all three would otherwise try to claim the device.
Perhaps there's a way of disabling the dc driver to allow the de driver to have a go? Hmm, I've not needed to try before. It might be possible to override the in kernel dc driver with one compiled specially to not recognise the chip. Hmm.

Steve

vishibalo

I would say its using 21143-PD, but I am not sure if I am looking at the right thing. I have the picture provided, it should tell you what it has.

How complicated is it to remove drivers from a kernel? and would it be necessary?

Also, somewhat off topic, how do you get out of Shell? Every time I use Shell option I can not get out of it.

photo.JPG_thumb

stephenw10

Nice photo. :) Yep definitely 21143-PD.

Type 'exit' to get back to the menu from the CLI shell.

Recompiling the kernel to remove drivers is not hard if you've already got a build environment setup. I don't.

It would be better to try to prevent the dc drive attaching somehow. If you rebuild the kernel you're likely to have to repeat the process at each pfSense update which could become tiresome pretty quickly!

One thing you haven't tried yet is running a 2.2 snapshot. They are built on FreeBSD 10 and having many, many driver changes. They are still in alpha it the moment so there might be some other nasty surprises but if the interfaces behave differently then at least you might be able to use them under 2.2 when it's released.

Steve

vishibalo

i would give it a try, anything at this point. how would i get a 2.2 snapshot?