Realtek 8111E

[testuser35]

Sorry to interrupt you guys, but could somebody PLEASE, PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD clarify whether or not the onboard NIC is working with FreeNAS 8 /8.0.1?

I've spent the last 3 hours looking for a compatible motherboard with low power consumption, and the compatibility list of BSD 8.0 is not helping. At all. Because most of the newer NICs are either not listed at all or listed under their portable counterparts (e.g. the notebooks which have the NICs installed are listed instead of the NICs itself).

Is the RTL8111E supported or do i need to compile the drivers beforehand?

 

[ohnename]

Yes, the RTL8111E is supported.

 

[testuser35]

My mistake, though my intention was to post this in the AMD E-350 thread, as the question had been asked, but had not been answered.

Thanks for the fast reply - do you anything about the "performance issues of certain Atom-based boards" (->known issues in the documentation) ?

How...bad...is the performance, do they even work at all?

Regards

 

[marcusmarcus]

Performance seems OK to me. I can transfer files to my FreeNAS at around 30-35MBps. I can stream multiple videos from to multiple computers and a tablet without any stuttering in the videos. All my computers are connected through a wireless gigabit router, not sure if I would get better performance if I would put all my wired connections through a dedicated gigabit switch instead of through the router. Also I have 4GB of RAM on my motherboard. From what I read on ZFS, I should probably have more RAM for all the hard drive space I have but 4GB is the max my motherboard would take. If my motherboard would support it, it would have been interesting to see how much of an improvement I would have gotten if I put in 8GB of RAM. For the purposes I am using my FreeNAS for though, I can't complain about the performance. Also my hard drives are all 5400RPM, so that probably is effecting performance as well.

 

[jfr2006]

Yes, it will work ok. It's working on my system very well. I get around 80MB/s when reading and 70MB/s when writing, using Samba/CIFS ;)

 

[HolyK]

Can anyone test the real difference between Realtek 8111E and some Intel NIC (for example this one) ?

 

[headconnect]

Can anyone test the real difference between Realtek 8111E and some Intel NIC (for example this one) ?

Shouldn't be a problem :) Setting up Asus E35M1I-Deluxe this week which has the 8111E integrated NIC, and just to be safe I ordered two Intel Gigabit CT's (picture looks the same, can't really get anything else out of it, should be what we're talking about).

I'll have it installed from the start (i hope, now starting to have cold sweats about it fitting in the case with the harddrives, but should be fine) - so i'll be running everything from the 8111E at first until stable, then switching over to the Intel to see if i can feel a difference.

Any suggestions on how to best chart this performance? Will most likely be writing against a Win7 machine (though I can set up NFS on it for reads at the very least), don't have any non-windows machines on decent network (wireless/virtual on shared gigabit adaptor) :)

 

[headconnect]

Right Mr. HolyKiller, got my setup done, running 8.0 release, did ATTO-Disk benchmarks on both onboard 8111E and the Intel CT PCIe - and there's a problem. They both max out my gigabit connection. Will edit with screenshots if i can.

 

[HolyK]

Excelent! I guess integrated Realtek 8111E is enough at all, so PCIe NIC isn't needed. I am happy to hear (read :D) your info.

Thanks a lot ! ;)

 

[karfam]

hello from greece
i am noob on freenas and just searching for help :)

i just installed freenas amd64 8.0 on a gigabyte motherboard with realtek 8111e

but i cant select network interface because there isnt any option to choose there.

so i assume problem with the drivers.

facts

1)ethernet port leds work
2)pciconf --> re0 ..... gigabit ethernet
3)ifconfig --> lo0 (only)

checking the logs found -->
"re0: Using 1 MSI messages
re0: Chip rev. 0x2c800000
re0: MAC rev. 0x00000000
re0: Unknown H/W revision: 0%2c800000
device_attach:re0 attach returned 6 "

after googling that i found this -->http://old.nabble.com/Realtek-8111e-on-8.2-RELEASE-td31767619.html

could anyone help?do i need to compile new kernel?

 

[warri]

It's probably a driver issue, I had the exact same problem. Because i wasn't able to include a working driver or recompile the kernel, I switched to 8.0R x86.

Then I went on and tested the BETA1, and there amd64 works perfectly without any hassle. So I think the missing driver is included in the BETA-Releases.

 

[karfam]

thanks for the quick reply.
this was my next step.

8.0 x86 and then 8.0.1 beta x64

going to try now
thanks :)

 

[karfam]

ok thanks for the info.

realtek 8111e works with 8.0.1 beta 2 x64

now i am having problems with the shares :P

 

[sicute]

so i must using freenas-80-RC5.iso
i have same problem with realtek card too
re0: <RealTek 8168/8111 B/C/CP/D/DP/E PCIe Gibabit Ethernet> port
0xee00-0xeeff mem 0xfbeff000-0xfbefffff,
0xfbef8000-0xfbefbfff irq 18 at device 0.0 on pci2
re0: Using 1 MSI messages
re0: Chip rev. 0x2c800000
re0: MAC rev. 0x00000000
re0: Unknown H/W revision: 0%2c800000
device_attach:re0 attach returned 6