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    Supported PCI-X Quad Gigabit NIC?

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    • L
      lonevipr
      last edited by

      Ok guys, looking for a supported PCI-X Quad Gigabit NIC to put in a pfSense machine. Picked up a Sun Quad GigaSwift PCI-X (501-6738-10). Read these work "great" for pfSense.

      Shutdown box, put it in & restarted it, got errors about cas:fail to probe PHYs or something close to that. Should have took a pic of the error message, before removing the card. As soon as card was pulled, machine booted back up just fine.

      Tracked down this thread:https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,33960.0.html

      Seems driver was missing, but was updated. I am on 2.1.5-RELEASE, so i'm not sure why that card isn't supported. LMK if there is anything I can do to get this card working.

      Other card i'm looking at is a "Intel Pro/1000 GT" meets my requirements of quad gigabit ethernet PCI-X. Should I just buy this instead?

      Running pfSense 2.2-RELEASE (amd64)

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      • stephenw10S
        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
        last edited by

        The Intel card will almost certainly work fine but check the forum for specific reports.  ;)
        You could try a 2.2beta image to see if that sees your Sun card any differently.

        Steve

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        • C
          charliem
          last edited by

          Looks like the PCI-X support in cas(4) was not added until FreeBSD 9.x or 10.0, though pfSense may have backported it for pfSense 2.0.x.  Check the cas(4) man page here: https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=cas&apropos=0&sektion=4&manpath=FreeBSD+10.0-RELEASE&arch=default&format=html, and note that the 501-6738 PCI-X line is not in 8.3, but is in 10.0:

          The following add-on cards are known to work with the cas driver at this time:
          
               +o	 Sun GigaSwift Ethernet	1.0 MMF	(Cassini Kuheen) (part no. 501-5524)
               +o	 Sun GigaSwift Ethernet	1.0 UTP	(Cassini) (part	no. 501-5902)
               +o	 Sun GigaSwift Ethernet	UTP (GCS) (part	no. 501-6719)
               +o	 Sun Quad GigaSwift Ethernet UTP (QGE) (part no. 501-6522)
               +o	 Sun Quad GigaSwift Ethernet PCI-X (QGE-X) (part no. 501-6738)
          

          So, 2.2beta should theoretically work with your Sun card.  I (think I) verified the cas driver is compiled into the current 2.2beta image:

          [2.2-BETA][root@pfsense.localdomain]/root(7): uname -a
          FreeBSD pfsense.localdomain 10.1-PRERELEASE FreeBSD 10.1-PRERELEASE #49 30e366f(HEAD)-dirty: Mon Oct  6 03:27:35 CDT 2014     root@pf22-amd64-snap:/usr/obj.amd64/usr/pfSensesrc/src/sys/pfSense_SMP.10  amd64
          [2.2-BETA][root@pfsense.localdomain]/root(8): kldstat -v | grep -i cas
                          106 cas/miibus
                          105 pci/cas
          
          
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