FreeBSD / Nas4Free / Broadcom (bge) driver issues

January 6 Lars-Georg S. Paulsen 7 Comments

Lately I’ve tried out NAS4Free, in favour of FreeNas… and so far I love it.
But installing it on my new Dell R320, with onboard NIC, I’ve had big problems getting network up.

First issue is you consoll or your log file will be filled with.

bge0: 2 link states coalesced
bge0: 2 link states coalesced
bge0: 2 link states coalesced

Searching the web, they all say you have to do add hw.bge.allow_asf=”0″ to your loader.conf,
but that’s not enough for me.. I also need to add hw.pci.enable_msi=”0″…

So to get NAS4Free up and working with broadcom (bge) nic, do the following.,

# mount -o rw -u /cf
# echo ‘hw.bge.allow_asf=”0″‘ >> /cf/boot/loader.conf
# echo ‘hw.pci.enable_msi=”0″ >> /cf/boot/loader.conf
# mount -o ro -u /cf
# reboot

Some how, that’s not enough… I always have to boot with the network cable deattached…
When the system is up and running, connect the cable again, and it’s rock solid…

I have not persued the last problem a lot, maybe a ifconfig up/down also work, but I’ve learned one thing, don’t mess with something that works.. 🙂

7 Coments

  • datnus04/03/2013

    Sigh, the trick doesnt work for Nas4free 9.1.0.636 on Dell R720 (with Broadcom bcm 7520)
    Pls help.
    Tks MILLION

  • Lars-Georg Paulsen05/03/2013

    You getting the bge0: 2 link states coalesced error or the watchdog timeout issue? As fare as I googled, these are the main issues.. But if your planing on using this a little more the some lab, I would strongly recommend getting a hold of a intel NIC… I’ve done that now… and now its rock solid!… I’m running 9.1.0.1 (636) now, but with a intel nic..

  • Besnik07/10/2013

    Hi I am having issues installing this driver.

    First of all I cannot mount cf.
    Am I supposed to load a driver to a usb device?

    Can you please help?

  • nken11/10/2013

    I ran into the same issue on a Dell XPS 8300. The fix above with some slight corrections worked.

    – Use mount command to get the device (not /cf in my case)
    – If using echo to modify loader.conf, use append (>>) as > overwrites; nas4free has vi available.
    – ifconfig bge0 down and then up got the the network working for me.

  • Solución al error "2 link states coalesced" en NAS4Free28/10/2013

    […] Fuente (en inglés): Dev.n0ll.com […]

  • mike vidal26/11/2013

    The directions worked fine with the embedded version of nas4free and my HP Microserver gen8

  • Lars-Georg Paulsen17/12/2013

    @nken
    Your right, there was a small bug there, it should say >> to append to the file, not overwrite it. And yes it will be different for embed vs disk installs.

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