Need some help with Intel Pro 1000 NIC setup

[martin_nv]

Freenas newbie here. I switched out an old SMC network adapter that was only 100Mb and installed an Intel PRO 1000, and it does not seem to get an IP address and connect to the network. On the bootup, the text scrolling by says this:

Code:

Setting hostname: freenas.local.
Starting dhclient.
em0: no link ..... got link
em0: link state changed to UP
DHCPDISCOVER on em0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 3
DHCPDISCOVER on em0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 3
DHCPDISCOVER on em0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 7
DHCPDISCOVER on em0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 14
DHCPDISCOVER on em0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 17
No DHCPOFFERS received
No working leases in persistent database - sleeping.

The output from ifconfig in the shell is as follows:

Code:

em0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
        options=4219b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM,TS04,WOL_MAGIC,VLAN_HWTSO>
        ether 68:05:ca:3a:bd:32
        inet 0.0.0.0 netmask 0xff000000 broadcast 255.255.255.255
        nd6 options=9<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED>
        media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex>)
        status: active
ipfw0: flags=8801<UP,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 65536
        nd6 options=9<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED>
lo0 flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 16384
        options=600003<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,RXCSUM_IPV6,TXCSUM_IPV6>
        inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128
        inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x5
        inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000
        nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
[root@freenas] ~#

To test the NIC I then boot with FreeBSD liveCD, the Intel nic works (ping test ok) BUT only after configuring the IP address manually using this command:
ifconfig em0 inet 10.10.10.90 netmask 255.255.255.0
BUT If I try to issue this command in Freenas I still cannot ping.
If I boot the same box with a Mint Linux liveCD, the Intel adapter gets an IP address and works fine.

The version is FreeNAS-9.2.1.8-RELEASE-x64 ( have downloaded the latest.
The DHCP server on my network is working, other devices get IP addresses no problem.
The UPC on the NIC is 735858202176, googling this UPC shows the network adapter I have.

Any help on what I should try next to get this going would be appreciated!

TIA,
Martin

 

[anodos]

The NIC should work out of box. If it's not working then you either have a defective NIC or defective network.

 

[jgreco]

Are you sure that there are available leases? How many leases is your DHCP server configured for?

 

[martin_nv]

The NIC should work out of box. If it's not working then you either have a defective NIC or defective network.

I thought this NIC should work out of the box too. The NIC works fine when I boot the same box on the same network, with Windows XP and Linux Mint liveCD, so the NIC is functioning.

Are you sure that there are available leases? How many leases is your DHCP server configured for?

DHCP server on the Asus router is dishing out IP addresses from 10.10.10.101 to 10.10.10.254 so there should be lots of IP addresses available.

Further troubleshooting this morning reveals that the Intel NIC boots Freenas when I put it into an Intel box (Intel E4600 @ 2.4GHz). It is not working in the Athlon 64 X2 4200 box. I will try to fiddle with some of the BIOS settings on the Athlon box, and as a last resort move the Freenas to the Intel box.

Thanks for the responses!
Martin

 

[jgreco]

That's ... disappointing. Usually Intel cards are our go-to choice for whenever there's a networking problem.

 

[joeschmuck]

That is some odd operation where the NIC works for everything except your configured FreeNAS in the Athlon box. I suspect there is some leftover configuration conflict so could you try something to test this out, if you haven't already done so...

1) Using a new/different boot device (assuming you are using USB Flash), install a fresh copy of FreeNAS to the boot device.
2) Does the Intel NIC work now?

Justification: I'm assuming you are using an older preconfigured boot device so it's possible that the configuration is holding something hostage. To eliminate that as the cause you need to start from a clean setup. I also say to use a different boot device so that you don't harm your original one and can easily roll back. Lastly, it sounds like the Intel NIC is actually working in that system so it must be a software problem. If after doing this the problem still exists, I'd think a bug report is appropriate.

 

[martin_nv]

I just tried putting FreeNAS-9.2.1.9-RELEASE-x64.img onto a USB drive with the same results. :( (This box only has 4gig ram so I can't try 9.3)

 

[pirateghost]

4gb RAM minimum was not a new thing for 9.3

 

[Ericloewe]

The problem sounds so awfully specific that even insufficient RAM gremlins don't really quite make sense...

I think I remember early Intel PCI-e GbE controllers having some issues with certain PCI-e configurations, maybe the FreeBSD driver is missing a workaround for these situations?

 

[joeschmuck]

However the OP states the FreeBSD Live CD works fine which is the sticking point for me.

@martin_nv You should try version 9.3 even though you do not have enough RAM, you may be able to boot but do not add jails or plugins, in fact do not even add your pool, just run bare minimum. This way you can at least see if it's the older FreeNAS version. I don't know if you can upgrade your RAM to 8GB and then just use the latest version of FreeNAS. If you try this, do not upgrade your hard drive pool or you will not be able to roll back to 9.2.1.x.

Also, is it possible you have a counterfeit NIC card?

Lastly, what motherboard do you have? I want to see what you have and maybe we could make a suggestion. It's possible to change the IRQ in the BIOS or maybe just install the card into a different PCI-e slot.

 

[jgreco]

While a counterfeit card is a possibility, I'd expect it to fail similarly across FreeBSD variants. There isn't a whole lot of low level change going on in those drivers.

It is certainly worth reviewing where you obtained the card, though. We're discussing counterfeits in another thread currently.

 

[martin_nv]

@joeschmuck I just tried a freshly downloaded copy of 9.3.1 with the discs disconnected and the network is still a no go. It seemed to take longer to boot up too. I entered the ifconfig command to set a manual IP address, while the IP address was set I was still unable to ping.

I guess it could be a counterfeit card, but it looks legit to me, it has the holographic yottamark sticker on it (mentioned in this thread), when I enter the yottamark number into the website it returns my nic's MAC address. I purchased it from newegg.ca.

The PC is an older Dell desktop with an Athlon 64 processor and 4 gigs of ram, details can be found in the attached text file. The BIOS settings are pretty basic, they just allow you to turn off stuff like onboard NIC, serial port, etc. Not a detailed BIOS setup like you would get with an Asus motherboard, for example.

For now I think I will just use Freenas in the Intel box. It is probably temporary anyway, I'm just reading up on ZFS and will eventually go that route which will require better hardware.

Thanks for your help guys!

 

[joeschmuck]

Well I wish that you found a way around it. Yea, if you purchased the card from newegg, odds are good it was not counterfeit. I still don't understand why it works in one machine and not another. Well hopefully if you stick with FreeNAS, you will purchase some compatible hardware and have a nice system running in the near future.