Intel Mini-ITX Atom 8-core Hardware Build Recipe Available Here

robi

Actually, there's no reason to use any USB3 feature with pfSense. There may be boot problems, for example, booting a memstick image from a USB3 stick in a USB3 port may lead to unpredictable results, since USB3 needs a special driver, which may not be available during boot… after all, pfSense is a network appliance, USB2 should be more than enough.

The adapter cable we just showed above is a perfectly elegant and cost effective solution to have USB2 ports extended to the front panel connectors. I am using it without any issues.

trumee

@rob Did you take off the usb face plate? Pictures?

robi

No. Why would I?

The face plate has a cable with an 9-pin female plug hanging inside the box, waiting to be plugged into a USB2 header on the motherboard. This motherboard doesn't have such a header. It only has a USB3 (blue) header.

Pay close attention to this photo:

The blue end is female and plugs into the motherboard.
The smaller black end is unusually male, and plugs into the cable going towards the faceplate on the case. These two cables connect to each other.

trumee

@robi:

"The smaller black end is unusually male, and plugs into the cable going towards the faceplate on the case. These two cables connect to each other."

The above sentence was the key. Now it is clear!. You do use the original cable which shipped with the case.

robi

Yes!

micrauft

I have a very similar SuperMicro board (the A1SRM-2758F), which I use as a PBX and was uncomfortable with the CPU temps as I was using it in a 3u Chassis (for telephony cards). I found that the CPU cooler shape is roughly compatible with a "Socket G" whatever that is with a 51mmx51mm mounting pattern.

I found that the Dynatron I2 Cooling Fan fan fits perfectly on this board.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004WMCX2U

It's not perfect, but it works pretty well compared to the stock fan-less heatsink.
Even when load-testing this system the temperature never really rises anymore.

Just wanted everyone to know that this cooler is more or less compatible.

robi

How did you screw it on?

mifronte

Just completed building the specified hardware and memtest ran fine. I am able to power the system on using IPMI, but I am unable to power it on using the M350 front panel button.

I have the cable labeled Power SW connected to the motherboard's Power Buttton header. The cable labeled Power LED connected to the motherboard's FP PWRLED header.

Does it matter which pin the black or red wires are connected? I tried both and I can't power the unit up using the M350 front panel button.

Sir Loin

Not sure if this is the same problem I ran into, but when I built mine, I looked at the header picture on the printout, and I was looking at it upside down, or the picture is upside down to how I was looking at the motherboard. So I ended up with wiring everything wrong. It took me a while to realize my mistake (or the printout's mistake :-)).

mifronte

@Sir:

Not sure if this is the same problem I ran into, but when I built mine, I looked at the header picture on the printout, and I was looking at it upside down, or the picture is upside down to how I was looking at the motherboard. So I ended up with wiring everything wrong. It took me a while to realize my mistake (or the printout's mistake :-)).

Thank you. That is exactly my mistake too. I assumed the manual's orientation is correct if I looked at my motherboard in the same way. It turned out the manual's diagram is upside down. Now that the wiring is correct, things are working as expected. I can never figure which pin goes to the red wire and which pin goes to the black.

I have 3 Evercool 40mmX15mm PWM fans installed with 16GB (2x8GB). The fans are loud at boot, but then settle down to a whisper quiet 3000rpm. Its funny the DIMMA1 is 8 degrees Celsius cooler than DIMMB1 because DIMMA1 is under a fan.

I am running memtest on the RAM and will get to installing pfSense 2.2.3 sometime this week.

Sir Loin

Ha! I am glad you have your problem solved. Good luck with your build. Let us know how it goes with 2.2.3.

trumee

@mifronte:

I have 3 Evercool 40mmX15mm PWM fans installed with 16GB (2x8GB). The fans are loud at boot, but then settle down to a whisper quiet 3000rpm. Its funny the DIMMA1 is 8 degrees Celsius cooler than DIMMB1 because DIMMA1 is under a fan.

Can you point to the website where these fans are available?

The fans from mini-box are very load.

mifronte

@trumee:

Can you point to the website where these fans are available?

The fans from mini-box are very load.

Evercool EC4015 PWM from Directron. Keep in mind the fans are 15mm thick compared to the ones from mini-box which are only 10mm. So there is enough clearance using the bracket that puts the fans over the DIMMA slots. However, for the front fan, you will need to mount the fan on the external side where the front USB ports are located.

You will also need standard PC fan screws since the screws that come with the fans will not work.

These fans RPM ranges from 3000+-25% to 10,000+-10%. Looks like the low end has a wider variance, but they are still pretty quiet. At boot time, the fan will be full throttle and will sound like jet engines (true server class hardware) so if your router ever gets real hot, these fans will definitely let you know it.

pfcode

HI,

Question about the power supply, I have a 12V5A power adapter, if I use the 4-pin DC power connector and 120W Module, Will that adapter work?

R3Z3N

I will say that I am thoroughly unsatisfied with either pfSense and/or this hardware.

Using just the initial config, my box will lose its ability to acquire a dhcp lease from my cable modem, a Motorola SB6141, showing a link of 0.0.0.0. If I power cycle, and wire direct with my PC, I get a working address. PfSense was up for only 2 days at a time if that on 2 separate occasions. Tried other patch cables as well. May go back to my ddwrt box as it works much more consistent.

The most recent fix was to clone an unused MAC address for the wan, but that no longer works either.

Frustrated as this should have much more potential.

Also, it seems that many times the unit times out when making changes within pfsense, along with the inability for LAN clients to be pushed my choice of DNS servers. If I instead use the DNS resolver for this, clients show as though my choices are available, but they still only use my PIA VPN DNS. Weird behavior IMO.

Note: my pfsense box will shortly (~5 seconds) acquire a default IP of 192.168.100.10 from the Motorola SB6141, but then be assigned 0.0.0.0. It should move on from the internal DHCP to one assigned by my provider (comcast) which is usually 72.xxx.xxx.xxx

Sir Loin

I remember I had a similar problem, my pfsense router was not getting an IP from my Comcast cable modem. I am not sure what was wrong. To debug, I connected a LCD monitor to the video out. It was displaying "Igb3: Could not setup receive structures". I did the below, and that error was gone, and I got an IP from my cable modem. Everything has been working fine since then.

@Sir:

BTW, I had this error from the VGA output:
Igb3: Could not setup receive structures
I needed to do this below to get the system to work. It is from https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Tuning_and_Troubleshooting_Network_Cards
Intel igb(4) and em(4) Cards

Certain intel igb cards, especially multi-port cards, can very easily exhaust mbufs and cause kernel panics, especially on amd64. The following tweak will prevent this from being an issue:
In /boot/loader.conf.local - Add the following (or create the file if it does not exist):
kern.ipc.nmbclusters="1000000"
That will increase the amount of network memory buffers, allowing the driver enough headroom for its optimal operation.
To avoid this, only enable WAN and LAN during setup, then go to the shell to create the file (if it isn't there already) and edit it. I went to the shell (use VGA out or IPMI) and downloaded nano editor (I don't use VI, which is built in already).
pkg_add -r ftp://ftp-archive.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD-Archive/ports/i386/packages-8.1-release/Latest/nano.tbz  
pkg is not part of pfsense. Follow the steps in this link to bootstrap pkg on pfsense:

https://doc.pfsense.org/index.php/Installing_FreeBSD_Packages

R3Z3N

^ Tried that on a fresh install, WAN will only get DHCP address from a fresh install, but not consistent at that.

Either way, I will not thread jack my problem here. Need to do more troubleshooting.

mifronte

Got pfSense 2.2.4 installed and running on my Supermicro A1SRi-2758F in the M350 mini-ITX enclosure.

Here is my final configuration:

Supermicro A1SRi-2758F
Samsung EVO 120GB SSD
Kingston KVR16LSE11 8GB (x2)
Mini-box M350 enclosure with 2nd hard drive mounting bracket
150w AC-DC Power Adapter, 12v 12.5A
Evercool EC4015SH12BP 4-Pin PWM Fan, 40x40x15mm (x3)

The firewall is connected to my Motorola SB6141 cable modem with a Comcast 125Mbps/12Mbps broadband. I did have to set the kern.ipc.nmbclusters=512000 to get rid of the Igb3: Could not setup receive structures error.

So far, everything is stable and working better than I anticipated. Coming from dd-wrt, pfSense is much more intuitive and more responsive. When I ran MemTest86 with all 8 cores, the 3 PWM fans spun at 7500rpm to keep the system in the mid 40C. In normal state, the fans spin down to 3300rpm and all is quiet.

Now I will be waiting for my fiber gigabit to become available.

@mifronte
On what kind of media was you installing pfsense.
mSATA, SSD, HDD, SATA-DOM, SSD-DOM, USB Stick,…

mifronte

@BlueKobold:

@mifronte
On what kind of media was you installing pfsense.
mSATA, SSD, HDD, SATA-DOM, SSD-DOM, USB Stick,…

Oops, I forgot to specify that in my final configuration. I used a Samsung EVO 120 GB SSD connected to the SATA3 port.

Anyone know if it is recommended to do a full install on a USB 3.0 flash drive? I would prefer to have gone this route for fan location reason on the M350 enclosure.