11.3 RC1 doesn't like X520

[iLikeWaffles]

I got myself two X520s (one for freenas, other for PC) with 10G transceivers along with a 10G switch. Fiber is the only connection between these machines.



Freenas clearly has a driver, can talk with the SFP+ modules and is alive enough to assign it an IP and even start pushing some http through, but not much more. This is curious, as yesterday it worked better - it failed to load the dashboard but the main page was fine. The day before that it was even better, with very little signs of anything going wrong.

I only got up to 1.5G on iperf, which is disappointing. Curiously while doing iperf, the windows client was experiencing an interrupt storm. Stuttering audio, laggy mouse and 50% interrupt usage. That's with all offload features enabled and jumbo MTUs set on every device that had the option. However copper to PC caused no such behavior, suggesting that something is peculiar about how Freenas is accessing the LAN.

I know Intel X520 should be supported fine, so I'm wondering what kind of signs I should be looking for.

 

[iLikeWaffles]

So is there a methodology to debug this? Any logs that might contain hints of what's wrong? Any indicators going off that might point me to the cause?

Or am I just as well off just changing stuff and seeing if it goes away?

 

[jgreco]

I know Intel X520 should be supported fine, so I'm wondering what kind of signs I should be looking for.

X520 normally just works. However, there are a lot of knockoff X520's floating around, apparently. Where'd you get them from? Were they priced "too good to be true"?

 

[iLikeWaffles]

X520 normally just works. However, there are a lot of knockoff X520's floating around, apparently. Where'd you get them from? Were they priced "too good to be true"?

Absolutely correct diagnosis. Attaching pics of chinesium miracle price """X520"""

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I get cloning the PCB, but how did they clone the silicon? Someone ran off with some alpha silicon masks or did they really recreate all that from scratch?

 

[jgreco]

Frak! I am so sorry, waffle-liker. I would have adored being wrong in favor of almost any other better answer.

You might look for forum posts from me on "Shenzhen" or "back-alley" if you're interested in other instances of this.

Basically the way this works is that a lot of electronics are produced in Shenzhen, ranging from top-of-the-line to bottom-of-the-barrel. The stuff that is not produced there might still be cloned there. :^)

For stuff that is produced there, not every product is perfectly produced. PCB's can contain errors. Assembled boards can fail testing. Chips can be rejects. These things should technically be destroyed, but sometimes they aren't. So if someone runs off with a pocket full of Intel ethernet controllers, maybe real ones that really work, or failed ones that don't, you can find someplace to make a passable version of the PCB and some child slave labor to solder the bits together, bang it into a box, and sell it to some naive computer parts distributor in North America like NewEgg (I've got knockoff examples sold by NewEgg so I get to use them as a poster child). Worse are all the things "from China" on eBay.

So a few rules to live by.

1) Highly popular profitable devices like Intel X520's, LSI HBA's, etc., are common targets. During their peak sales period, these devices are insanely profitable for their legitimate manufacturers. So they're also profitable to the counterfeiters.

2) Unusual devices like Chelsio cards are UNlikely to be cloned, because the kind of companies buying them are buying direct from major integrators who got their devices direct from Chelsio, not via the channel.

3) Used devices are a crap shoot. Best luck is to be had buying from a company that is clearly and obviously de-racking servers from data centers. That eBay seller with twenty different kinds of server chassis and a hundred of each of them, who's also selling cards and CPU's and memory, that's legit basically 100% of the time. On the other hand, the eBay seller with a hundred X520's but other listings including bulk tennis shoes and children's toys, RUN LIKE HELL.

Again, I am so sorry you have to deal with this. Good luck and please tell us how it turns out.

 

[iLikeWaffles]

Update: This is the exact model I've bought:

Intel X520-DA1 10 Gigabit 10Gbps PCI-E E10G42BTDA Server Network Adapter | eBay

1 pcs X520 DA1 Network Adapter. Work seamlessly with existing Fibre Channel and iSCSI storage. Are compatible with existing Fibre Channel and iSCSI drivers, and. SFP+ Direct Attach Copper or SFP+SR, SFP+LR.

www.ebay.com

One is plugged into my PC and is working, apparently, fine.

I'll try doing a swap and see if that results in anything interesting. I'll also grab an original X710 and see if that's any better

 

[jgreco]

Oh, yeah, Shenzhen back alley special for sure.

Sure tells:

1) Card doesn't even say Intel
2) Generic box
3) No Yottamark
4) Absolutely hilariously ridiculous crap heatsink
5) Crap for bracket
6) Everything thrown on a single label
7) Seller in China

The real thing looks more like

Notice the Intel logo, the front-to-back airflow heatsink designed for use in rackmount, the long barcode label...

Carefully designed and marked bracket...

Holographic Yottamark sticker, separate date and country of manufacture sticker...

Things to look for. Still not a guarantee! Some of the knockoffs are shockingly well done.

 

[artlessknave]

I got 2 LSI "chinesiums" (I like that term, derogotory as it is) myself before I knew what I was looking for.
they no longer read any drives, which is...kind of useless for an HBA. :(
"Theartofserver" has both a youtube and ebay store, and has a video about how to spot some of the knockoffs.

fake lsi sas (suposedly m1015/9211)

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fake sas lsi

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[IQless]

Sure tells:

1) Card doesn't even say Intel
2) Generic box
3) No Yottamark
4) Absolutely hilariously ridiculous crap heatsink
5) Crap for bracket
6) Everything thrown on a single label
7) Seller in China

Thank you, this just saved me a few hundred bucks! Had to bookmark it for later :)

 

[jgreco]

I got 2 LSI "chinesiums" (I like that term, derogotory as it is) myself before I knew what I was looking for.
they no longer read any drives, which is...kind of useless for an HBA. :(
"Theartofserver" has both a youtube and ebay store, and has a video about how to spot some of the knockoffs.

fake lsi sas (suposedly m1015/9211)

Discover the magic of the internet at Imgur, a community powered entertainment destination. Lift your spirits with funny jokes, trending memes, entertaining gifs, inspiring stories, viral videos, and so much more from users like artlessknave.

imgur.com

fake sas lsi

Discover the magic of the internet at Imgur, a community powered entertainment destination. Lift your spirits with funny jokes, trending memes, entertaining gifs, inspiring stories, viral videos, and so much more from users like artlessknave.

imgur.com

Yeah those are easily spotted. The real M1015's have like a dozen stickers on them.

Ironically some of the Dell controllers sometimes look like knockoffs to me, can't remember which one, maybe the H200.

Thank you, this just saved me a few hundred bucks! Had to bookmark it for later :)

Great! Happy to hear it, encourages me to waste more time blabbing on about this kind of stuff. ;-)

 

[jgreco]

Hey would either of you be willing and in a position to mail me one of your fake cards? It would probably actually be very handy for the forum to be able to have a side-by-side picture comparison of the fake cards next to a legit product, and I have good stock of the X520 and M1015. Not worth doing if it's more than a few bucks, probably, and I wouldn't return your cards, though I would probably add them to the Hall of Shame here.

Just trying to turn lemons into lemonade, y'know. It makes me very happy to guide people in the right direction.

 

[artlessknave]

I was thinking of trying to muck about with them and see if i could resurrect one...but realistically i only need 1 to do that. I'm in canada, though, so it would depend where you are geographically (obviously nobody should say more than country in the public forums). if you want to message me we can see, ill never use 2 of them; even if i got one to work, i would never be able to trust it for anything but testing.

 

[jgreco]

Oh I always forget I've got a themed location here :)

The company isn't hard to find even if you just start with "jgreco" and "freebsd" --

Attn: Joe Greco
sol.net Network Services
P.O. Box 16
Milwaukee, WI 53201-0016

If you ship anything please drop me a line. The USPS gets testy when they have to hold packages as they don't fit in the box.

 

[artlessknave]

ill have to see. it might cost me as much to send a card to you as it would be to buy you one direct from ebay :/
not that I would do that since it benefits the scammers.

 

[jgreco]

It's fine, no worries.

 

[artlessknave]

@jgreco sent you 2 cards. I'll pm tracking number

 

[jgreco]

Oh! Cool! I'm just back from my Coronavirus Tour 2020 (visited 4 of the 6 states). Drove out to the Bay Area for a datacenter deployment, gone more than two weeks. 5500 miles-ish. Totally wiped out. I'll be backlogged for a bit but this is definitely still a thing I really want to do.