Intel s1200kp + intel pro 1000 PT quad, 5 out of 6 NICs not working

[m.phobos]

Hi all,
I'm a freenas user since 2012. I've just upgraded my home server from an atom d2700 SOC running freenas 8.3 to an Intel s1200kp with xeon e3 1260L running Freenas 9.3 stable. I upgraded because
a) I wanted ECC RAM,
b) I wanted >2 HDDs,
c) I wanted >1 NIC for both link aggregation and data backup purposes (I'm planning to back up my freeNAS machine content to a spare ReadyNAS server).
To be honest, I had satisfied my c) need on the old setup by buying a PCI intel pro 1000 MT dual NIC, which started working on FreeNAS 8.3 out of the box.

Unluckily I'm having 2 main networking problems with the new setup:
1. the Intel S1200kp comes with 2 NICs. While the 82579LM NIC is currently working with no issues, the 82574L is not even recognized. Googling a bit tells me that the 82574L controller is not officially supported by FreeBSD/FreeNAS. Is there a way to enable that NIC?
2. In order to partially solve problem 1, I bought an Intel PRO 1000 PT QUAD NIC (EXPI9404PT, a PCI-e 1.0a card that uses 2 Intel 82571GB chipsets). Before buying this card I successfully (apparently) checked its compatibility with my mobo, but at the moment the PCI-e card is not even recognized by the BIOS of the mobo. Please, do you have any suggestion?

Thanks :)

 

[cyberjock]

1. Nope. You're kind of screwed.
2. No clue why it wouldn't be detected by the BIOS of your motherboard. Have you tested the NIC in another system to make sure its good?

 

[m.phobos]

1. Yeah, I had the same impression, thanks for the confirmation. That's why I went for the additional NIC card.
2. I received the NIC only yesterday, and plugged it in ASAP, expecting it to work flawlessly as the previous one on the old machine. At the moment I don't have access to a different machine with a PCI-e to check if the NIC is broken, but I'll ask some friend of mine about it. For the sake of completeness, I tried to connect one of the NIC ports to my HP 1810 smart switch to check if something happened. The WebGui of the switch told me that the port was working at 10mbps half duplex, but no light was on or flashing on the NIC card, and no new LAN client was identified by the router WebGui.

Does anybody have experience of successfully using a Pcie 1.0a x4 card out of a 2.0 x16 slot? Does anybody have experience of using the Pcie slot of the Intel S1200KP motherbord for other than video cards?

Thanks :)

 

[m.phobos]

Update:
I resumed a very old win-xp pc with a free PCI-e port. I plugged the NIC and it was recognised. Once I let windows install the drivers the 4 LANs where appraently available, but all the ports were reported to run at 100mbps. Then I tried to connect each port to the switch. No matter which port was used, It kept switching between "LAN disconnected" and "acquiring IP address". I have never been able to get a stable connection. At the moment I don't have any other newer pc to test the NIC on.
Do you think a test with a live linux distro on the freenas machine could help understand whether the NIC is recognized or not?
Thanks :)

 

[m.phobos]

Update #2: I informed the seller about the unexpected NIC behaviour on my freenas machine, my old winxp pc an a bunch of live linux distros tested on the freenas server hardware. He already sent me a replacement NIC. I expect to try it next monday.
I hope it will solve this annoying issue.

 

[Ericloewe]

PCI-e should be fully forward- and backward-compatible, as well as robust enough to work regardless of available bandwidth.

PCI-e 1.0 x4 in PCI-e 2.0 x16 is fully supported, however, some consumer motherboards behave badly with anything other than graphics cards in PCI-e x16 slots.

 

[m.phobos]

Thanks for your reply.

Update #3: I got a replacement NIC, but apparently nothing has changed. I still can't see the new card from both the bios and freenas, but when I plug one of the ports to the switch It tells me it's working 10Mbps full duplex.
I rememeber I read something about the non-compatibility of my mobo's PCIe with rev 1.0 cards, but I can't find the source at the moment. I was considering getting a newer NIC (e.g. intel i350-t4) with PCIe 2.0 to try out this idea.
At this point I wouldn't be surprised of such a behaviour of my mobo. One of the reasons I'm out for a new NIC is that one of the 2 onbards is not recognized by freenas (as well as a bunch of other live linux distros).

 

[Lasse]

The EXPI9404PT card does not work in PCIe 2 slots - get a newer adapter.

http://www.intel.com/support/network/adapter/pro100/sb/CS-030873.htm