Barracuda 310 NICs

tsquareweb72

On the Webfilter 210 (at least my 4 year old version) four wires go from the parallel port to a board on the front where the LEDs are. The picture in the original post had two more wires going to the NIC card. I added a picture of the parallel port, the NIC card with all of the wires going to the front board with the two ports (no other wires connect to it…it only connects to the motherboard in a PCI slot) and lastly a picture of the BIOS under On board Device. I didn't see anything else the may "by-pass LAN" settings (but I might have missed it). The BIOS password is bcndk1

There is a jumper on the PCI board. When it is closed (how it was when I opened the case) the orange light is solid on when a cable is plugged in. If I take the jumper off (open) then nothing happens when a cable is plugged in.

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stephenw10

Hmm, OK I'm not sure that has LAN-bypass at all. That looks like just the magnetics, not a relay.

Which orange light are you referring to? The link LED? If that lights then there not any lan-bypass relays. That would prevent link at all as it disconnects the Ethernet port entirely.

How do the interfaces appear?

Do you see a link reported by 'ifconfig' when you connect a cable?

Edit: Yeah the 210 did not have LAN bypass. Looks like those might be rl NICs :(

Steve

tsquareweb72

Yes, I was referring to the link LED. When using as the Barracuda Webfilter, both the WAN and LAN would stay orange until it completely booted up. Something in the programming had to turn it on. The pfsense doesn't see them at all. IFconfig only lists the on-board (back) NIC.

I gave up and bought a PCI ribbon cable and a two port PCI NIC. The NIC matches the spacing of the original port. Only one mounting ear matches, but that is enough to hold it in place.

Thanks for all of the help in trying to figure it out. BTW what is a rl NIC?

Stephen

Grimson

@tsquareweb72:

Thanks for all of the help in trying to figure it out. BTW what is a rl NIC?

A NIC that's using a chipset from Realtek, those are prone to cause problems as the FreeBSD driver and the hardware in itself aren't really good.

tsquareweb72

The on-board NIC (in the back) is also a Realtek, but pfsense picks it up. I'm not disagreeing with you on Realtek not being good, but why would pfsense "see" one and not the other?

Is my assumption wrong about something in the Barracuda software "turning it on" during the boot process?

Grimson, I know you were probably just answering "what is a rl NIC" and why it may be the problem…it just made me wonder if I should stop researching how Barracuda is turning it on and resign to the fact that pfsense (FreeBSD) doesn't have drivers and that is why it isn't working. But then, why is the on-board Realtek recognized?

I did give up on getting it to work so it isn't a big deal, but I ask to satisfy my curiosity and in case another poor soul out there is trying the same thing.

Stephen

Grimson

Well you can check the dmesg output. If it's a missing driver it should at least show up as an unknown device.

tsquareweb72

The joy of computers…I have been trying to get pfsense running on a Barracuda Spam filter 300 and this Barracuda Webfilter 210. I put the Webfilter to the side while waiting on the new NIC and PCI ribbon cable. When you gave me something else to try, I pulled the hard drive out of the Spam filter 300 (running pfsense 2.4.2) and put it in the Webfilter. I was lazy this time and didn't wipe and reinstall pfsense. It booted up after showing all the errors of missing and new parts...with all three Nics!
The front two and on-board all work!
Prior to posting on this forum, I loaded pfsense over a dozen times...the newest, older, 64bit and 32bit. Those front two ports never showed up! The only difference this time was it was preloaded on a different computer (I didn't expect it to work...just being lazy).

After the concern about Realtek vs Intel, I will probably keep the new Intel card I got and use it instead.

I wish I knew why it finally started working.

Thanks for all who helped and good luck to all who are trying this,

Stephen

stephenw10

Hmm, that is odd. I would not expect 2.4.2 to have any greater or lesser ability to 'see' that hardware.

The NIC on the back, whilst also Realtek, is using the re(4) driver. The two front NICs use the rl(4) driver.

Both NICs suffer a poor reputation in pfSense/FreeBSD but the re NICs are in fact far better. The rl cards are a 100Mb NIC and were truly bad!

Consult the source:

@https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd/blob/9bf061d97597ae47d8b131fef6cafcfc9f5e23b3/sys/dev/rl/if_rl.c#L48:

The RealTek 8139 PCI NIC redefines the meaning of 'low end.' This is
probably the worst PCI ethernet controller ever made, with the possible
exception of the FEAST chip made by SMC.

But yeah they should appear all the time. There is no by-pass on the 210 so they are not enabled in any way by the Barracuda OS.

Steve

tsquareweb72

I just figured out that the two front NICs were only 100Mb and came online to tell anyone else trying this not to bother…and your post confirmed my findings.

I have 200Mb download at my house and the front NIC only got 40Mb at best.

My PCI ribbon cable is coming in Thursday and I will test the dual Gigabit Intel card then.

Long story short, don't bother with the front NICs...replace them. This article is great for handling the lights on the front though.

Thanks again,

Stephen

nickdahat

@thcassio:

Hi guys, nice piece of software there, but I just made a jumper on the parallel port wiring that activates / deactivates the the 2 frontal ports, no software interaction is needed and now they stay active all the time. I can post pictures if anyone is interested in doing so, it's really easy.

I really don't care for the lights so all is fine now, pfSense running with 80MBPS throughput on Barracuda 410 Web Filter (Sempron 3200 + 1Gb RAM)

I also replaced the HDD disk with a diskonchip IDE module, so I disabled that annoying loud fan next to the HDD, which probably saves a lot of energy and ear capillaries…

I was wondering if those realtek network cards could be replaced with gigabit low profile cards to allow better throughputs, this device has odd ethernet cables wiring running inside it coming from the rear of those cards..

I'd like to see what that jumper looks like. And it works constantly? That's cool!

stephenw10

It looks like he just jumpered the two pins together. The two with wires from pins 5 and 6 on the parallel port. However if that works it appear to be more by chance that anything else. Both of those pins are output at the parallel port so are input at the relay board. To connect the relays you just need to take pin 5 high so if whatever is on pin 6 at that end can supply current it might do it.
Since they are both input I doubt it will do any harm to try. Though I can't test it myself so…. any risk is on you. ;)

Steve

Barracuda-Heart

@stephenw10 Hello.... I know this is a very old topic and not sure if I should start a new thread or continue.

I've purchased an old Barracuda web filter 310 and I do not have the option after I login as admin to enable the auxiliary/serial port in the blue menu option.
The port is active and has link and activity indicators on, but a few seconds after I login with admin ID, only the activity indicator is on.

I tried the suggestion to put a jumper on two pins, which disabled the parallel port in bios after booting.
Also, this web filter has all of the 4 wires connected to the parallel port.

https://www.reddit.com/r/PFSENSE/comments/a8ofmw/will_the_barracuda_web_filter_310_chassis_work/

Thank you very much for taking time to read my post.

stephenw10

So what actual issue are you seeing there. Have you been able to install pfSense?

That screenshot looks like it's from the Barracuda OS.

Steve

Barracuda-Heart

@stephenw10
Before installing pfSense I wanted to get familiar with what web filters do and figured it's easy to go with Barracuda OS since it's already configured.
Issue I'm having is with the auxiliary port. I cannot find any settings in the OS or web interface to enable the auxiliary and serial ports. Any suggestions
on how to enable both ports?

Second issue regarding two front ports:
Booting with USB with pfSense ISO, i'm not able to get them to stay active even after jumping the two pins.

Thanks

stephenw10

Ah OK. Well I've never actually had one of those units so I can't really tell you anything about the Barracuda OS. I would have expected the front ports to work by default there though. It should have a web interface of some sort for configuring it.
Shorting the pins always seemed a bit suspect to me because neither is set as output. Using the software method is easier to understand what it's doing.

RobbieTT

@Barracuda-Heart

It's been a long time since I played with one of these but I seem to remember that the ports defaulted to off (for security) and only held-up and open during the bios start. From then onwards it took an OS command to make them available.

The actual physical interfaces for ethernet were on a relay, with bypass mode as the default until energised.

I would probably not use one for pfSense as things have moved on and you might find yourself fighting with unfamiliar issues. I also seem to remember that a basic Barracuda OS licence, if you wanted to try it, was a murderous sum of money!

Good luck!

️

stephenw10

In pfSense try the attached program. It runs in 2.7 but I have no way to test it on the real hardware.BCHW64.txt BCHW.c.txt
Remove the .txt extension. Set the permissions as executable.

Barracuda-Heart

@RobbieTT
Hi Robbie,
You are right about fighting with unfamiliar issues, I've been at it for a month now and not making any progress.
Appliance was really cheap similar to Cisco equipment and I'm trying to switch my job/interest into networking. :-)

Thank you very much for the info.

Barracuda-Heart

@stephenw10

Sorry I'm not a Linux person and have to ask dumb question.

What folder do I need to past the file into?
Rename the file to BCHW64.txt BCHW.c (no extension) ?

Thank you very much

stephenw10

You can put it anywhere. I usually use /root for such things but /conf is also common.

The C file is the source code in case you (or anyone) wanted to review or change it. You don't need that on the firewall.

You want the other file, so just BCHW64, and you have to set the permissions before you run it like:

[2.7.0-RELEASE][admin@t70.stevew.lan]/root: ls
.cshrc                .links                .shrc                 nmap.error
.history              .login                .ssh                  nmap.result
.hushlogin            .profile              .tcshrc               wazuh-agent-4.5.0.pkg
.k5login              .rnd                  BCHW64
[2.7.0-RELEASE][admin@t70.stevew.lan]/root: chmod 0755 BCHW64 
[2.7.0-RELEASE][admin@t70.stevew.lan]/root: ./BCHW64 
BCHW Version 1.0 14/12/2014 stephenw10
This program is intended to control the hardware of some models 
of Barracuda web filter. The LEDs and LAN-Bypass are controlled
directly by pins in the parallel port.
BCHW can accept two arguments:
 green, yellow, red or bypass followed by on or off.
 status will report the current setting of the port bits