Sun Fire x4500 woes, or which version support ixgb

[darkschmu]

Not sure if this has been covered before, thought I might help shed a bit of light on the eternal question: How the heck can I install FreeNAS on an X4500 Thumper.

Literature claims you need to install any OS on either disc 0 or 1. The problem is those drives dont equate to disc 0 or 1, but rather the 24th and 28th (/dev/sdy and /dev/sdac for linux, ada24 and ada28 for FreeBSD). I'd wager once the OS is installed on either of those drives, you could technically mirror it to the other and be set for awhile.

Forgive me if this was stated before, I just wanted to share the fruits of a few days of toiling on this dinosaur.

Now to the reason for my visit: This frame has an older 82597EX PCIx fiber card which neither FreeBSD 11 nor FreeNAS 11u4 picked up on, and I am wondering if ixgb support was dropped entirely, and if so what is the newest version of FreeNAS that still supports it?

pciconf reports the following:
none2@pci0:14:1:0: class=0x020000 card=0x7036108e chip=0x10488086 rev=0x02 hdr=0x00
vendor = 'Intel Corporation'
device = '82597EX 10GbE Ethernet Controller'
class = network

and dmesg:
pci11: <network, ethernet> at device 1.0 (no driver attached)

So the system 'sees' it but doesnt know how to 'talk' to it. Trying to find ixgb drivers I can compile and add back to the frame turns out to be an exercise in frustration since ixgbe seems to have taken the relay.

Thanks,

Ben

 

[Ericloewe]

The problem is those drives dont equate to disc 0 or 1, but rather the 24th and 28th (/dev/sdy and /dev/sdac for linux, ada24 and ada28 for FreeBSD).

How is that in any way a problem?

Now to the reason for my visit: This frame has an older 82597EX PCIx fiber card which neither FreeBSD 11 nor FreeNAS 11u4 picked up on, and I am wondering if ixgb support was dropped entirely, and if so what is the newest version of FreeNAS that still supports it?

Of course it wasn't dropped. It's more likely that it's a custom-ish card made for Sun that's not immediately recognized by the driver. It's probably best to contact the maintainers of the Intel Ethernet FreeBSD drivers and see what they have to say.

 

[darkschmu]

How is that in any way a problem?

I expected a certain amount of snark... you must've seen some pretty terrible things, Eric.
What I meant was that from my experience, disc 0 and 1 would somehow be ada0 and ada1, y'know, something logical and expected. Anyway, moving on.

Of course it wasn't dropped. It's more likely that it's a custom-ish card made for Sun that's not immediately recognized by the driver. It's probably best to contact the maintainers of the Intel Ethernet FreeBSD drivers and see what they have to say.

I tinkered a bit more with FreeBSD11 and got the if_ixgb driver to load and recognize the card, but it's still not quite right. Despite being plugged at both ends with a working switchport, it still detects 'no carrier'. More tinkering to be done, and as you suggested I'll see what the Intel folks have to say.

Issuing `kldload if_ixgb` in the FreeNAS CLI doesnt even register the presence of the module so I was assuming it had been dropped or not loaded upon install. I've read elsewhere that tinkering with the FreeNAS settings/OS wasnt encouraged, so what would be the recommended way to integrate the driver with my current deployment?

Ben

 

[Ericloewe]

What I meant was that from my experience, disc 0 and 1 would somehow be ada0 and ada1, y'know, something logical and expected.

No, maybe in a vertically-integrated environment (i.e. Solaris). Besides that, it's really a crapshoot (a relatively stable one over time, at least).

Despite being plugged at both ends with a working switchport, it still detects 'no carrier'.

Could it be the SFP+ modules causing trouble? I believe the driver enforces a whitelist by default.

Issuing `kldload if_ixgb` in the FreeNAS CLI doesnt even register the presence of the module so I was assuming it had been dropped or not loaded upon install.

I expect it to be loaded by default, like all the Intel drivers. I'm not sure what the expected output of kldload is in that case, though.

One more thing you can try is the current nightlies, because they might have updated drivers from FreeBSD 11.1.