LAN Driver, Qualcomm Atheros AR8171

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

arrmo

Hi,

Steve has it right - and this is basically what I did (created a VM in VirtualBox, built it there).

FYI, as I missed this above (sorry!), this is an x64 driver.

Thanks.

davros123

Thanks guys.

Might park this one for the moment as time is precious for me at the moment and go with the Intel PCIe nic card for now.

Perhaps we'll see it come standard in a later pfsense release ;)

davros123

Hi arrmo,

I dad some issues with my PCI wifi card so I decided to take the plunge and move to 2.2 ALPHA.

The driver installed without issues (just temporarily loaded it using kldload).

I can not create a VLAN on the alx0 interface.

Can you pls. check to see if you can create VLANs on your interface?

EDIT: looking at the nic with ifconfig, it's not supported…ie does not show VLAN_HWTAGGING

stephenw10

You don't need to have hardware tagging on the NIC to use VLANs it just offloads some work from the driver/CPU. In fact in some cases VLANs work better with it disabled. For example: https://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/2577

The driver has to know how to handle VLANs though, perhaps this doesn't yet. It's a development driver.
Edit: A quick glance through the code seems to show plenty of VLAN references.

Steve

davros123

Hi Stephen.

Thanks for the reply (and for trawling the code).

Unfortunately the interface still does not show as a valid interface when defining VLAN's (em0 does, but not the alx).

balance

hi there I got the asrock h81m-itx

thx for the driver arrmo

anyone know how to inject the driver into pfsense for install? never compile anything. anyone can point me into the right direction. plan to add a intel nic to the pci-e of the board and that will give me to two nic as I need :D

stephenw10

Easiest way to get this installed would be to add the Intel NIC first and use that as the only assigned interface. Then add the new driver and the Atheros NIC will be seen. You can always change the NIC assignment afterwards if you prefer. Alternatively you can probably put the driver on a USB stick, mount the stick and copy it across manually.

Steve

arrmo

Hi,

It seems that alx is now officially supported in FreeBSD (see https://github.com/markjdb/alx-freebsd/commit/74500d38295e6a9c6e476ecab7be7a052b9620da).

But this doesn't seem to be in the latest v2.2-RC … is there a reason why not?

Thanks!

stephenw10

Because it didn't make it into stable before the cut-off for 10.1 unfortunately.
You can still compile the newer kernel module from 10-stable and override the in kernel driver in 10.1 though.

Steve

arrmo

Hi,

Thanks for the info! Asking more, only because I'm trying to understand - not meant to be negative at all, please don't take it that way.

Here is the change for 10 (right?) … http://freshbsd.org/commit/freebsd/r273366. Isn't this before the 10.1 cutoff? Or perhaps not, again - trying to understand.

I'd be more than happy to build the new module, just not sure where to get it from ... :(.

Thanks!!!

stephenw10

So stable was copied to releng for 10.1 on the 3/10/14:
https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=272461

A few weeks before the support was added to alc(4). It's not in 10.1:
https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/release/10.1.0/sys/dev/alc/if_alc.c?view=markup

Hence it's not in pfSense 2.2.
I imagine it would very easy to include it if some key piece of hardware was using the AR8171 but I doubt you'd be able to persuade the devs to put it into 2.2 now we're in RC.

If there's an ISO for a 10-stable snapshot available you can just boot that up (in a VM perhaps) and build the kernel module. If not you may have to copy the more recent code into a 10.1 install and build there instead.
Once you have the updated kernel module copy it to /boot/modules in the pfSense and add the line:

if_alc_load="yes"

To the file /boot/loader.conf.local
That will load the module at boot time and override the in kernel driver. Hopefully! ;)

Steve

arrmo

Makes sense, and thanks for taking the time to explain - much appreciated!

I did have a VM for FreeBSD, that's how I built the "older" alx driver (earlier in this thread). I say "did" because I removed it earlier today, it was having all sorts of issues … :(. But the older driver works, not much reason to build a newer add-on, just thought I could perhaps remove the extra file (and use the driver in the kernel).

Thanks again!