XigmaNAS

I would genuinely appreciate some help on this. I will try to be as clear as possible, please let me know if more information is needed:
Constant "re0: Watchdog Timeout" errors when transferring files to brand new NAS4Free build.

HARDWARE
-----------------
MB/CPU: Biostar A681-350 Deluxe (AMD Fusion APU 350D)
NIC: On-board Realtek RTL8111F
STORAGE: 3x 2TB WD20EARS + 1x 3TB WD30EZRX set up as RAIDZ1
BOOT: Lexar 16GB USB Flash drive

SOFTWARE
-----------------
NAS4Free 9.1.0.1 (build 573)
Running embedded, not live

ALREADY TRIED...
---------------------------------------------------
1. Reset to factory defaults.
2. Transferring from different computers in the house. No difference.
3. Transfer using SMB, FTP, AFP. All cause the issue.
4. Tested RAID read/write using dd command. Get ~130MB/s read and write

The NAS4Free system is currently unusable. Upon transferring a series of files by FTP, the watchdog errors begin to intermittently interrupt file transfers and eventually I lose all connectivity with the server. Unable to reach the IP. I cannot even reboot the server, as it fails to restart. I have to hard reset.

there are other reporters of same problem:
http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=15244
https://support.freenas.org/ticket/1850

actually , your better option is to buy a new NIC, INTEL are the best suggestion to use in BSD due well support & Drivers.

Or wait until a new driver are published, to solve the problem.

raulfg3 wrote:there are other reporters of same problem:
http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=15244
https://support.freenas.org/ticket/1850

actually , your better option is to buy a new NIC, INTEL are the best suggestion to use in BSD due well support & Drivers.

Or wait until a new driver are published, to solve the problem.

Great thanks for the links. I did have some success reducing these errors using this suggestion:
http://www.thewebernets.com/2011/06/20/ ... out-error/

My problem is I am trying to keep the system low-power so I used a Mini-ITX motherboard and the 1 PCIe slot is already being used for a SATA controller. Maybe I will look into a USB 3.0 gigabit ethernet adapter until the realtek driver is improved.

raulfg3 wrote:there are other reporters of same problem:
http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=15244
https://support.freenas.org/ticket/1850

actually , your better option is to buy a new NIC, INTEL are the best suggestion to use in BSD due well support & Drivers.

Or wait until a new driver are published, to solve the problem.

I've done some research and it looks like since I have no free PCI slots, I'd be waiting for an update to:
a) the re(4) driver to fix 'watchdog timeout' errors for RTL8111F to use my onboard NIC
b) the axe(4) driver to allow me to add a USB3-to-gigabit ethernet adapter (currently all ASIX AX88179 based)

Can somebody give me an idea if the update schedule for FreeBSD drivers? IS it at random, month or years in between?

Thanks

rtl8111F is supossed to work in lates BSD 9.1 so can work in latest N4F 9.1.0.1.636.


What version do you use?

raulfg3 wrote:rtl8111F is supossed to work in lates BSD 9.1 so can work in latest N4F 9.1.0.1.636.


What version do you use?

Running the latest version 9.1.0.1 but the driver really needs work, as with all other RTL8111F users it seems that we all experience dropped connections and "watchdog timeout" errors that make the 8111F often unusable. Technically it is recognized (maybe using the older RTL8111E driver?) but it is not a stable working driver it seems.

cflemm wrote:Can somebody give me an idea if the update schedule for FreeBSD drivers? IS it at random, month or years in between?

I think That years to ver 10, and months to ver 9.2, Nas4Free have the latest BSD 9.1

Fix really depend of BSD not N4F, my best suggest to you is that buy an Intel NIC.

raulfg3 wrote:

cflemm wrote:Can somebody give me an idea if the update schedule for FreeBSD drivers? IS it at random, month or years in between?

I think That years to ver 10, end month to ver 9.2, Nas4Free have the latest BSD 9.1

Fix really depend of BSD not N4F, my best suggest to you is that buy an Intel NIC.

Thanks for the info!
My problem is I have no PCIe slot free for a new NIC. Either I'll need to replace the whole motherboard, or wait for a driver update for either the RTL8111F or the ASIX AX88179 chip. Trying to figure out if it's worth waiting around, or if I need to rebuild the whole system.

You have good & cheap PCI Intel NIC, like this: http://www.alternate.es/html/product/In ... _GT/48830/?

raulfg3 wrote:You have good & cheap PCI Intel NIC, like this: http://www.alternate.es/html/product/In ... _GT/48830/?

Thanks I would buy one of these in a heartbeat, but my low-power server is built with a mini-ITX MB, which has just 1 PCI slot and is already filled with SATA3 controller.

Had the same board and problem as the original Poster.Tried almost everything after applying a few kernel tuning changes my system was stable for regular day to day usage. But I could still reliably crash it by doing 5 parallel large transfers over apf and unzipping 4 1gb .zip files over apf (all at the same time). Was about to give up and buy a new board and CPU. When I got the idea to disable hardware offloading checksums. Thinking "make bad driver as dumb as possible" and let the kernel do all the complicated stuff.
sysctl.rc kernel changes (Some are to increase my throughput others for the watchdog driver problem):

hw.pci.enable_msi 0 LUIS: Segmentation Offload to network card. Disable to isolate re: watchdog timeout problem
hw.pci.enable_msix 0 LUIS: Segmentation Offload to network card. Disable to isolate re: watchdog timeout problem
net.inet.tcp.recvbuf_inc 524288 TCP-Tuning - http://fasterdata.es.net/TCP-tuning/FreeBSD.html
net.inet.tcp.recvbuf_max 16777216 TCP-Tuning - http://fasterdata.es.net/TCP-tuning/FreeBSD.html
net.inet.tcp.sendbuf_max 16777216 Default: 4194304
net.inet.tcp.tso 0 LUIS: Segmentation Offload to network card. Disable to isolate re: watchdog timeout problem

Lan Management:
MTU ____ (default)
Media Auto Select
Extra Options -rxcsum -txcsum -vlanhwtag

After applying the nick options (Extra Options) I don't loose my network after stress tests. I do get a few "Request timeout for icmp_seq" (pig from my desktop) during the heaviest load but network recovers after 8 lost pings.
Hope this helps any body having problems with RTL8111f on nas4free or other FreeBSD derivatives.

-Luis