LAN Driver, Qualcomm Atheros AR8171

arrmo

Hi,

Have been hunting around for a while now, pulling my hair out … :-(. Has anyone found a driver for an Atheros AR8171. It's on my MB, ASRock H81M-ITX.

Thanks!!!

stephenw10

There is a development driver here:
https://github.com/markjdb/alx-freebsd
You would have to compile it yourself and add the kernel module. Not sure what it would compile against though, FreeBSD 10 probably.

Steve

arrmo

Thanks very much! Checked it out, compiled it … and it works.

Much appreciated!

nikkon

That's good news.i could have the same issue if i bypass the install issue i have.
Can you make some performance test with this "beta" driver just to know how it goes ?
Thx

arrmo

You bet! I installed the driver, and tested iperf through the pfSense box … both UL (LAN to WAN), and DL (WAN to LAN). Here is what I saw ...

UL ~ 430 Mb/s
DL ~ 600 Mb/s

This is on a GE network, that I have benchmarked before up to pretty close to 1 Gb/s. But overall, quite good it seems - feel free to disagree though.

stephenw10

What CPU is that throughput data using?

Which pfSense version? Did you compile it against FreeBSD 8.3?

Steve

arrmo

Hi,

This is on pfSense 2.2, compiled on FreeBSD 10.

Sorry, do you mean the CPU load during the test? I admit, didn't monitor that (but I think this may be limiting iperf overall).

Thanks.

stephenw10

I meant what actual CPU are you using. Looking at your board I would expect almost any compatible CPU to be capable of routing at >1Gbps in which case 600Mbps doesn't look that great. I guess the driver is non-optimal, still a lot better than not working at all. ;)

Steve

arrmo

Hi,

I didn't put a great processor in it - just a Pentium G3220. Was trying to build a fairly inexpensive box. But even that is a 3 GHz processor, so you may very well be right.

I did notice that the driver is logging a lot to syslog. I can remove this, and try again … make sense? But ... I don't have a box on the WAN side anymore that runs iperf ... I can install it on the pfSense box, and have it terminate there, but - will it make a difference if I use the WAN or LAN IP address?

Thanks!

arrmo

FYI, recompiled, reinstalled the driver (and rebooted) … and retested. I'm now getting ~ 930 Mb/s, so life is good ... :). I'll be honest though, not sure how to tell if I'm going through the WAN port or not. I am targeting the WAN IP address (from the LAN side), but not sure if it really gets there ... :(.

Thanks.

davros123

Hi arrmo.

Congrat's on getting this working!

I also have this board and would love to run with the single onboard nic (using VLANs).

Can you please post the driver and some instructions (or links) to get this working?

Thanks a heap!

arrmo

Absolutely! More than happy to help out if I can. Is there a place to post the file? I can't attach it here (not of the allowed file types).

Thanks.

stephenw10

Just re-name the file, add .png to the end. Don't use the .txt extension as that confuses some browsers and corrupts the file.

That driver appears to still be in active development, the last commit was only 19days ago, so check back if you find any bugs.
Edit: Nothing major changed since Dec last year though.

Steve

davros123

Excellent!

wikisend.com looks good for small files - no reg. needed.

or as Steve suggested, rar it, then rename to .png and add it to a post here.

arrmo

Hi,

You bet - attached here … just remove the .png from the end (real name is if_alx.ko).

Yes, it's active. I actually spoke to the author before building my driver, asked him to remove some of the console diagnostics (which he very graciously did - very helpful guy!). Let me know if you have any issues with this driver.

Thanks.

if_alx.ko.png

davros123

Thanks.

Do you have a linky or pointers on how to install/use the driver?

I am new to freebsd o/s….guess i can google but all help appreciated.

Thanks.

davros123

ok, found some instructions…but get this error... :-\


[2.1.4-RELEASE][root@pfSense.localdomain]/root(1): kldload /boot/kernel/if_alx.ko
kldload: can't load /boot/kernel/if_alx.ko: Exec format error

[2.1.4-RELEASE][root@pfSense.localdomain]/root(3): uname -a
FreeBSD pfSense.localdomain 8.3-RELEASE-p16 FreeBSD 8.3-RELEASE-p16 #0: Fri Jun 20 13:19:29 EDT 2014     root@pf2_1_1_amd64.pfsense.org:/usr/obj.amd64/usr/pfSensesrc/src/sys/pfSense_SMP.8  amd64
[2.1.4-RELEASE][root@pfSense.localdomain]/root(4):

and this in dmesg

KLD if_alx.ko: depends on kernel - not available or version mismatch
linker_load_file: Unsupported file type

stephenw10

Because:
@arrmo:

This is on pfSense 2.2, compiled on FreeBSD 10.

You can't use this module on 2.1.X because that's built on FreeBSD 8.3 as you've seen. Also it has to be the correct architecture, 32 or 64bit. I'm not sure what the module is.

Steve

davros123

Bugger, missed that very important piece if information.

Ok, soooo, what's involved in compiling on 8.3? Can I do this from pfsense (without downloading bucketloads of extra bloat) or do I need to have a freebsd install to compile?

Perhaps I should just cop the extra watts from my pcie Intel nic and run with that…

stephenw10

No, there are no build tools in pfSense and trying to add them will be a disaster. Use FreeBSD 8.3 to build things for pfSense. I have used a bsd live cd to compile simple things before.
I imagine you would have difficulty compiling this kernel module against 8.3 though, a lot has changed between that and 10. Probably easier to take the power hit. ;)

Steve