Bug #7763
closed
IX driver - fails to recognize media type with SFP after link drop
100%
Description
An issue was discovered by a customer running LAGG on ix0 and ix1 on the XG-2758. If a physical link to one of those interfaces dropped, the media type would come up as unknown.
I setup a XG-2758 with twinax connected from ix0 to ix1. If I remove the cable from ix0 or ix1, the media type will show as unknown when connected back in. It seems the longer it's unplugged, the more likely it is to fail. In some cases I was able to remove the cable and plug it back in without issue but the issue would eventually show itself. I also notice that the 10GBase-Twinax option under Speed and Duplex (Interfaces -> IX0) disappears when this issue happens. It's present in the drop-down prior to removing the link.
I tested this on pfSense 2.3.4_p1, 2.4, and FreeBSD 11-RELEASE.
It looks like FreeBSD is using Intel IX driver 3.1.13-k as the default IX driver. There was a bug reported back when 3.1.14 was the current driver similar to the issue we are seeing:
https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=150249
A similar report can be found here:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/muc.lists.freebsd.stable/waROA12uu4w
I downloaded the latest Intel IX driver (3.2.15) and compiled it in FreeBSD 11. I added if_ix_load="YES" to /boot/loader.conf and rebooted. I verified the updated driver was loaded and it appeared to resolve the issue. I copied the kernel module to pfSense 2.4 and it appeared to be resolved there as well.
I suggest we update the IX driver on 2.4 to resolve this issue. I suspect this is isolated to SFP/Fiber ports, not ethernet.
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