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I Bungled the NIC Model
02/17/2020 at 18:13 • 0 comments2020-02-17 - Monday
I had a sneaking suspicion that I bought the wrong (and indeed I did - a first gen/PCIe 1.0a!) model. D'oh! At 2.5 GT/s it still is faster than Gigabit, but that's not the end of the lousy features. The good/funny thing is that it's same vintage/era as the Dell itself. But the card very well might not fit my case, as I for some stupid reason got the "full height" version instead of "low profile". So. We'll see.
https://forums.serverbuilds.net/t/demystifying-intel-pro-1000-quad-port-nics/2401
The feature set isn't as broad as subsequent models but it'll have to do until/unless I hit another roadblock, or case-block, as the case may be (too short). Not a huge deal, but not great. I was really looking forward to the onboard traffic-shaping and QoS features.
Here's the official documentation page for the chipset (not the card itself):
Curiously, this product line goes back to 2005Q3 - yikes.
Card documentation:
Downloads and Software:
Now we're finally getting somewhere. I'm not sure if pfSense/FreeBSD supports this model, so here's my safety net:
Complete (OS Independent) Driver Pack:
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/22283?product=50495
FreeBSD Driver:
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/17509?product=50495
The NIC That Should Have Been:
More resources:
- https://www.cnet.com/products/intel-pro-1000-pt-quad-port-server-adapter-network-adapter-39y6138/
- Dubious and possibly not obviously helpful; Note - this document shows a quad port NIC but text lists it as a "Interfaces 2x RJ45 ": http://www.arp.com/medias/14309656.pdf
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Power is the likely culprit in the read errors
02/17/2020 at 17:36 • 0 comments2020-02-17 - Monday
I did some light digging into the errors that I've been seeing. Here's a sample output:
After a quick scan of the below two links, I'm guessing this is power-related and possibly caused by the Dupont-USB adapter.
- https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RD8IMZJEKMGSZ/ref=cm_cr_getr_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B000IV6S9S ( review of the exact model I bought )
- http://christopher-technicalmusings.blogspot.com/2012/03/freebsd-scsi-sense-errors-did-you-check.html ( power-related )
A couple debugging/troubleshooting options:- Try reseating both ends of the cable the dupont connector and the USB itself.
- Try changing USB header positions
- If there's enough clearance, try mounting DMM clips and observe while trying to force error
- If the above fail, mount externally and return the POS.
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pfSense installed!
02/17/2020 at 15:54 • 0 comments2020-02-15 - Saturday
I'm having issues booting the machine.
Status:
- Original hard drive is in place
- But boot loader wants to boot from the diskette.
- When booting initially it notified me that the CMOS battery needed replacement.
- I replaced the battery and tried updating the time through the BIOS but it wouldn't save.
- Curiously, BIOS isn't recognizing the onboard USB drive isn't, but external USB ports are appearing as boot options.
More tomorrow
2020-02-16 - Sunday
After more tinkering this morning, I figured out how to resolve BIOS issues:
- I removed the diskette from the boot options and rebooted
- The onboard USB appears (da0)! System Clock doesn't reset!
- Installed from external USB install (da1) to internal da0
- pfSense installs!
Problems/TODO:
- During configuration changes, there's more glitchy behavior than I'd like; System gets stuck in a retry loop; I need to research thisI'm guessing this is due to USB media? Might need to partition old HD and reinstall
- The onboard NIC speed is only 10/100; I should be receiving the new-used NIC by Wednesday.
More to come soon!
Successful local admin login