FreeNAS loading ixl driver instead of ixgbe for 10G lan card

[khaosryder]

I'm setting up a new FreeNAS 11.0-U3 box with a Supermicro X11DPH-T motherboard and am unable to get networking up and running.

ifconfig shows both ports as "status: no carrier" and network lights don't light up.

The interfaces are listed as ixl0 and ixl1 which makes me believe that it is using the wrong drivers.

Here is the relevant dmesg output:

I know that this is a very new motherboard, but I probably have better chances of getting the onboard X557-AT2 working with the right driver.

Is there a way to force FreeNAS to use another driver it should already have available?

I also noticed that the interfaces are reporting as 40G device in the bios, which is wrong.

This is probably why FreeNAS is loading the wrong drivers.

Thanks!

 

[Ericloewe]

The ixl manpage is rather light on details, but it implies proper operation with 10GbE. It only mentions X7xx NICs though...

I'd file a bug report so that this can be looked at (post the issue number here afterwards), but I'd expect the updated drivers in 11.1 to fix this.

 

[khaosryder]

https://bugs.freenas.org/issues/25937

Also filled ticket with Supermicro as to why it is reporting itself as 40-10G which are the XL7xx series of NIC and do use ixl drivers.

Still curious as if there is a way to force FreeNAS to use a different driver for specific hardware in the mean time.

 

[wblock]

If you really want to try the latest driver, I would recommend just downloading the latest FreeNAS and pulling it from there. It is not good practice to install anything that comes from other than official sources.

To answer other questions: the drives attach depending on the PCI IDs in the driver source. A driver will not attach to a device it does not know unless the driver source is modified and recompiled. This might be just a bug, with the wrong IDs included in this driver.

 

[bigphil]

If you really want to try the latest driver, I would recommend just downloading the latest FreeNAS and pulling it from there. It is not good practice to install anything that comes from other than official sources.

If it were a kernel module in FreeNAS and not baked in, sure...that could work, but its not. FreeNAS is usually so far behind on the Intel network drivers for the stable train, this is the only way I know to do it. It's been working great for me having the latest Intel drivers. I agree that untrusted sources are a bad idea, but I think my reputation on here should say enough. khaosryder...it sounds like this may work but you'll need to also load the latest ixl driver (I've posted the latest version is this thread for FreeNAS 11). There was another guy that was having issues with the 1.6.6 ixl driver yesterday and this fixed it for him. These drivers were downloaded from the official Intel website and compiled for FN 11.

 

[Ericloewe]

FreeNAS is usually so far behind on the Intel network drivers for the stable train

It is not. The current version is the one FreeBSD included three months ago. The only reason we're having this conversation is because Intel released new hardware a month after that. Since the next non-bugfix FreeNAS release is coming next month, with the latest drivers, hacking around with them seems unnecessary and probably encourages tinkering by other people who shouldn't be tinkering.

Even in the 9.3 days, when driver development was only seriously happening on 10.x, the newer drivers were backported to FreeNAS 9.3.

 

[bigphil]

It is not. The current version is the one FreeBSD included three months ago. The only reason we're having this conversation is because Intel released new hardware a month after that. Since the next non-bugfix FreeNAS release is coming next month, with the latest drivers, hacking around with them seems unnecessary and probably encourages tinkering by other people who shouldn't be tinkering.

Yeah, maybe this time around, but it hasn't been like this for 9.10.X (before 11 was released). The baked-ins are old and now that Intel has a couple of guys dedicated to FreeBSD driver development, it is much more speedy on their end to release updates. Think what you want, but it's been my experience that the ixl drivers have been old. Also...its not rocket science to load the kernel module drivers and back-out couldn't be easier. If people want to tinker, let them tinker...why would you want to discourage people from learning things? It doesn't impact you so let them do what they wish.

 

[wblock]

But it does impact us. We can't support an unknown driver. If we distribute it, that could imply that we condone it. And the possible problems with such a driver can range from data loss to security problems. For now, I deleted that message from this thread.

 

[khaosryder]

Similar results on Ubuntu and CentOS, they are both loading i40e drivers which is also for 40G NICs. I'll have a look at the nightly and if simply updating the drivers will fix it.

 

[khaosryder]

Tried the latest nightly with the same results. Supermicro tech support simply replied to remove the wrong driver and install ixgbe. Not sure what to do with this as from my understanding drivers get loaded and unloaded depending on hardware present so it's not much use if it's detecting the wrong NIC.

So I'm back to square 1, anyone with more experience have an idea?

 

[khaosryder]

For anyone in the future with this issue:

After moving the server from the lab to it's rack and connecting it to the 10G switch, the ports behave as normal. Apparently this NIC is indeed compatible with the ixl driver, but won't auto-negotiate to 1G or 100Mbps, only 40/10G.

 

[Ericloewe]

Not even 1Gb/s? What a horrible idea...