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Topic: Sun PCI Quad Fast Ethernet PCI Card in Monowall?  (Read 6305 times)
« on: September 04, 2008, 03:45:06 »
Ridge Cook *
Posts: 2

To All-

Been using MW on old PCs and thin clients for a while and am very pleased.  Starting new projects using IBM NetVista N2800 8364 Thin Clients.  2 pci slots and I wanted to maximize the number of lan ports available.  Since the switch to Gigabit speeds, lots of the Sun quad port NICs are becoming cheap.   Linux on x86 has the necessary drivers but wonder if current versions BSD versions of Monowall and PFSense do.  Has anyone had any experience with them and this card?

Thanks-
Ridge Cook

 
« Reply #1 on: September 04, 2008, 04:06:54 »
Orienz *
Posts: 17

http://kentie.net/article/netvista/index.htm

also checkout a HP Compaq Thin Client t5725 - Tower - 1 x Geode NX 1500@6W / 1 GHz - RAM 256 MB
« Last Edit: September 04, 2008, 04:12:22 by Orienz »
« Reply #2 on: September 04, 2008, 15:14:59 »
Ridge Cook *
Posts: 2

Orienz-

Thanks for the reply.  I have seen that site and several others concerning the IBM and MW.  None mention the Sun quad card so I'm still in the dark.  If I can get one cheap, I'll throw it in the box and try it.

Thanks again-
Ridge
« Reply #3 on: March 07, 2009, 03:57:23 »
stroths *
Posts: 9

I picked up 2 of the Sun quads cheap $25 total for both including shipping.  Monowall doesn't have the necessary drivers for them, but pfsense as well as various linux distros do.  pfsense has it compiled in their kernel and I hope monowall goes the same direction.  The driver for the Sun quad card is the "hme" driver.  Stands for Happy Meal something...the developers were near a mcdonalds and decided to name it after their food...go figure.

I pulled the if_hme.ko from my current FreeBSD install on my desktop pc.  I placed it in the /boot/kernel directory of the firmware image.  I modified the /boot/loader.rc with the following lines:

set if_hme_load="YES"
set hint.acpi.0.disabled="1"

The 2nd line has nothing to do with the quad card, but thought I would list it as it disables acpi if anyone needs to do that.  I also added "load if_hme.ko" (without the quotes) on the line above the "boot" command in loader.rc.

I am not sure which is needed as I pulled the info from different sources.  I can see on boot that the driver is loaded, but I am not sure what else I need.

Would love to use these cards, but I prefer the simplicity and stability of monowall over pfsense.


On a side note, these cards are made to fit a 64bit PCI slot, but they will fit and work in a 32 bit slot.  The last part of the card sits beyond the PCI slot, but apparently its not needed as it functioned fine with pfsense.  The exact model I bought was the Sun Fast Quad 501-5406 in case anyone is looking for one.  They are cheap and widely available on ebay.
« Reply #4 on: March 08, 2009, 05:58:30 »
stroths *
Posts: 9

Well, I finally got it working on the latest beta 1.3b15.  I had to compile the if_hme.ko on a 6.x install and then put it in the existing generic image.  I also had to modify the loader.rc to get it to load.

Here is a copy of the image for anyone that needs it.  This is the generic image as that's what I use and nothing else has been modified other than acpi being disabled.  It caused some annoying error messages on my hardware, so I disabled it.

When you get to the interface config screen, you will see hme0, hme1, hme2 and hme3.  I haven't had a chance to test it out much yet, but the interfaces at least show up now.

http://rapidshare.com/files/206685680/m0n0wall_Generic-1.3b15_hme.zip

This could easily be added into the kernel in future versions of monowall.  They just need to add the line below to their kernel config prior to compiling (hint hint).

device           hme           # Sun Quad 10/100 NIC support



EDIT:  I played around with this some and even though the 4 ports are recognized, they don't seem to work right.  I can ping them, but I can't get any of them to do anything besides that.  For example, if I have it set to LAN, I cannot ssh to it or pull up the web interface even though I can ping it.  If I switch the LAN to the onboard NIC, it works just fine.

I figure some dependency is missing that I am not aware of.  Once the kernel is built with that option above, it should fix the problem.  Until then, I am trying out pfsense again as the card works fine on it.  It's got some nice features, but its not nearly as fast as the streamlined monowall.

« Last Edit: March 09, 2009, 03:51:08 by stroths »
 
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