Fxp device timeout errors
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Hi. I have a AMD BE-2300 CPU and a nvidia 6150 based motherboard installed in a 2U rackmount case that let's me expose 1 PCI slot on the rear of the case. I need 2 100BT NICs for my pfsense application, but only realized after building the system that there is no driver support in pfsense for the embedded nvidia NIC (it's not in the freebsd 6 baseline). I had a random linksys DFE-530TX NIC in there that worked fine, and got the system up an running using a old USB 100BT ethernet interface. This is all with 1.2RC3.
The usb ethernet interface worked, but had significant performance problems, so installed a dual Intel 10/100 NIC that should be supported fine by the fxp driver. PFsense installs fine, detects both fxp0 and fxp1, configures the interfaces and boots fine, but no traffic appears to be to pass on those interfaces, and I get device timeout errors on both fxp0 and fxp1 logged on the console. Occasionally, on boot the WAN interface can get a DHCP address assignment, but cannot pass traffic. Pings to the LAN interface likewise fail.
In researching the problem, I see people recommended turning off PNP mode in the motherboard, which my BIOS does not have a setting for, but I have tried setting the PCI bios configs to reserved for the IRQ's the system is assigning to the NIC's. No improvement. I also have disabled every onboard hardware device that is not used by the system, also with no effect. I have tried booting pfsense, going into the loader and doing a boot -c command which from various messages should disable the pcibios option in the kernel, but again no go.
The NIC seems to work fine in a windows based machine, but for the life of me can't understand what is broken here. Can anyone tell me what's going on? I thought fxp based cards were supposed to be very reliable in pfsense?
thx
mike -
Try picking the multiprocessor kernel when you install.
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Try picking the multiprocessor kernel when you install.
Interesting. How do I do that? I didn't recall that option… Why would that make a difference?
EDIT: My system was upgraded so it didn't prompt for which kernel to use. I see how to get it to prompt for a kernel. Still interested as to why this would help things...
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Just a wild hunch. I had an issue with the PIC on a machine not liking RC3+ uniprocessor kernels. Similar symptoms. A re-install will prompt for the kernel, or you could mount the CD, backup the kernel, and copy the kernel_SMP.gz off the CD to /boot/kernel/kernel.gz
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Just a wild hunch. I had an issue with the PIC on a machine not liking RC3+ uniprocessor kernels. Similar symptoms. A re-install will prompt for the kernel, or you could mount the CD, backup the kernel, and copy the kernel_SMP.gz off the CD to /boot/kernel/kernel.gz
I tried that, but it didn't help. Turned out the problem was more mundane. The 2U case needs a PCI riser card to enable a PCI card to be plugged into it. Turns out the way the card sat in the riser, parts of the riser card weren't making good contact with the PCI slot on the motherboard. I swapped the riser card with one that was "taller", and now it works just fine. Weird that the card initialized at all.
The intel card is very fast… I'm glad I got I got it, but am kicking myself for not making sure the riser could seat properly first.
Thanks for the help!
