Switch to QNAP QXG-10G2SF-CX4 network card

In the last year's review I mentioned about my plan to switch to QNAP QXG-10G2SF-CX4 dual port SFP+ PCIe Gen3 x8 network controller from the Dell 540-BBGS one. The QNAP card is based on Mellanox ConnectX-4 Lx controller, which NetBSD support was the primary reason for the replacement.

Since I have already tested this card on my main machine using Manjaro Linux and NetBSD (which even led to one NetBSD specific bugfix), I was expecting a simple drop-in replacement (I use Artix Linux in my NAS server currently). Unfortunately, it wasn't meant to be, I faced two worth to mention issues.

Dell 540-BBGS and QNAP QXG-10G2SF-CX4

The non-standard LED positions

The first issue is related to non standard LED indicators' positions. Instead of being placed on the side of the ports, they are positioned on the top of the card. Because of this, lights are completely blocked once the card is installed. It is due to the fact that the QNAP card is designed for their own NAS devices, not for normal PCs, where likely those indicators are visible. I am personally not using LED indicators often, but it may be an issue for others. I believe it may be resolvable by drilling holes in place of LED's positions, however I left it unresolved this time (there are 4 LED lights, activity and speed indicators for each port).

In addition to that, I got confused with the low profile brackets. Two of them are included in addition to full size bracket: one is standard PC style bracket, another seems to be either QNAP or some server specific. Since I replaced low profile bracket with full size one to attach it to my main PC, I got surprised by the one I found in the box upon the switch: 1) it is not bent on the "upper" side to fix it to the case 2) it has a small hole for the screw instead of the groove in a bit lower position in comparison. I forgot, that it was also a standard low profile bracket in the package (which I didn't put back to the box), instead I used QNAP specific one. Since my case uses a hinge to fix attached cards instead of screws, I drilled a small hole on this hinge aligned with bracket's hole and used a screw to fix the card. Once I realized that I have low profile bracket for a normal PC, my setup was already complete...

QNAP QXG-10G2SF-CX4 with the QNAP specific low profile bracket

Unsupported Mikrotik S+DA001 DAC cable

I do have two types of DAC cables, one is Mikrotik S+DA001 1 meter SFP+ cable, others are Ubiquiti UniFi UDC-3 3 meters cables. I used a mix of one Mikrotik and one Ubiquiti cables in my NAS , since the third one was attached to my main computer. This arrangement was required, because 1 meter was too short to reach my main computer from the switch device, however it could reach the closer placed NAS server. This cable worked well with all my previous network cards, even if Dell was showing warning regarding unsupported modules. Unfortunately, QNAP network card refused to work with it at all and showed an error instead: "port_module:249:(pid 0): Port module event[error]: module 0, Cable error, Unknown identifier". Thus, it is advisable to use either officially supported cables or make sure about their support in the community. Luckily, Ubiquiti cables are supported and work without any warnings. I needed to buy one more Ubiquiti cable to resolve the issue, which costs a bit over 20 euros for 1 meter cable with the price gradually increasing for the longer ones (up to 3 meters).

Summary

If blocked LED indicators are not an issue, the careful cable/module selection is the only important concern before buying this card. Otherwise, the card works well on all major operating systems out of the box without additional firmware packages needed. Software wise it didn't require any configuration changes, since interfaces are named by generic eth0/eth1 names in Linux, same as the Dell card. I only needed to update my MAC address in the router to make sure that the same IP address is assigned by DHCP server. This network controller also enables me for the potential transition to NetBSD in the future, and I do plan some initial testing later this year. Depending on the delayed NetBSD 10 release schedule, the final switch won't likely happen until the middle or even end of the next year though (in case of successful testing). Finally, I plan to add few iperf3 test results in next week or two, but I do expect similar results to the Dell card.

QNAP QXG-10G2SF-CX4

2021 (and beyond) in review

This article is incredibly late this year, thus it touches some events from the first half  of 2022 as well. The blog was quite dormant last year due to personal factors, however, they were few interesting developments in hardware/software side, including new purchases.

HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M183fw

The need for the printer was getting more and more difficult to ignore, because of this I finally decided to buy one last year. Since, I got burned by the inkjet printers in the past, I have been looking for the laser one this time. Preferably, I wanted a multi-function device with a scanner, with options for network connection, including WiFi support. Colour support was a must too. Despite having pretty clear requirements, it proved to be pretty challenging to find one with all those features available. Laser printers tend to be business oriented, and they tend to be big, heavy, as well as expensive. In addition to previous expectations, I was also was trying to ensure that printer supplies will be readily available at least in the near future. There were some attractive options until I have checked availability of toners' cartridges. Eventually I ended up choosing HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M183fw multi-functional printer/fax for around ~300 euros at the time of purchase. I definitely don't need fax, but other than that, it had all the points covered above. It even has Web UI interface for management. The biggest disadvantage is an old style physical printer management panel with the small screen. It is a bit cumbersome to use, but the dimensions are relatively compact, just slightly bigger than a typical ink-jet multi-functional devices. Windows and Linux were quite well supported, I could print and scan using network connection, however scanning quality on Linux was disappointing, forcing me to use Windows, if detailed scanning is needed. Printing is fine in both OSes though. I didn't manage to make it work in NetBSD (using network), however it was not essential for my case, thus I didn't try too hard. It's neat feature is it's ability to print from the Android phone, however it requires to create and use an HP account, which is honestly in my opinion, an unnecessary prerequisite. What is more, the HP app has issues with login operation, which redirects to the browser first, doesn't authenticate upon returning to the app. Eventually, I found out that only Opera mobile browser allows me to perform the operation. Multiple application updates didn't resolve the issue as of today. In conclusion, I am quite satisfied with the printer despite all the oddities, but some peculiarities can be a show-stopper for others, especially for Linux users. Finding cartridges may also be more difficult than I would like to, but supplies are available to buy the last time I have checked. The device is also affected by CVE-2022-3942 vulnerability without any patches available except recommendation to disable LLMNR feature, which I followed myself.

QNAP Dual-port SFP+ 10GbE network

Last year I bought one more 10Gbit network card. This time it was QNAP QXG-10G2SF-CX4 dual port SFP+ PCIe Gen3 x8 card for around 180 euros at the time of purchase. It is based on Mellanox ConnectX-4 Lx (now Nvidia) network controller, which attracted me to purchase it. This controller is supported by NetBSD and gives me an opportunity  to migrate my NAS server to this OS, as it was originally intended a decade ago :). Not sure if it will really happen soon, but the network card was the major missing piece in the puzzle. I may do some trials this year, but the final decision depends on various performance, stability and compatibility factors. On NetBSD I hit an issue that it wasn't working on current branch (future NetBSD 10 release), though it did on netbsd-9 one. After some investigation, it appeared to be due to my CPU core count, which was not a a power of 2  (6/12 cores/threads). RQ Table size was based on number of cores, though controller requires it to be a power of 2 by reference manual. Thus the patch was applied to ensure the correct number. Currently the network card is not actively used, but I am planning to swap it soon. Dell QLogic 57810 network card will go to a well deserved rest or will be sold/donated.

QNAP QXG-10G2SF-CX4 network controller

WD Blue SSD SN550 NVMe 1TB

The final significant purchase was made early this year in the form of WD Blue SN550 NVMe M.2 SSD.  I bought it for around ~100 euros. SSD doesn't have the most modern specs, nevertheless it is considerably faster than my SATA based SSD, at least on paper. I also preferred bigger capacity over more modern specifications. It is currently used as a major storage for my desktop NetBSD installation and I didn't have any visible issues with it so far. I haven't performed any speed tests though, thus I can't provide any numbers for comparison unfortunately.

WD SN550 NVMe SSD

ClockworkPi DevTerm

One of the most anticipated devices last year was a DevTerm computer. I bought the A04 model by the end of 2020, but this specific configuration appeared to be the last one to be ready for shipment. While RPi CM3 or A06 based models were shipped starting August/September of the last year, A04 shipments started around late 2021, even making some people anxious about that. I received mine in the beginning of this year. However, the whole process didn't turn out perfectly as I wanted it, starting from incorrect tracking info to a broken screen upon arrival. Moreover, I also damaged the WiFi antenna during assembly. Luckily, ClockworkPi team sent me replacements promptly without additional charge! Though I needed to wait again, I finally managed to fully assemble it as a complete working device by the end of January. A04 model is based on AllWinner H6 SoC and comes with pre-installed Clockwork OS (Armbian) Linux distribution. The device is really cute and nice, screen seems to be a bit small, but keyboard is surprisingly usable. I was hoping to use it pretty frequently, however it is not the case as of now. I did a one time attempt to boot NetBSD as well, however unsuccessfully. Likely it should be possible to run (considering that SoC is supported), but probably requires some work on boot configuration and properties, as it is the case for various specific ARM devices. Pre-installed Linux also had some peculiarities, for example, not all cores are enabled by default. It requires small script to enable them. I didn't manage to make HDMI work yet, but I believe this issue was discussed extensively in ClockworkPi forums and possibly solvable. Also I needed to install an app (or script) to change screen brightness with a simple shortcut, otherwise it was usually too low by default. Sound works OK. Battery life with moderate usage is quite short unfortunately, but it can be partially resolved by having at least two pairs of batteries, which can be easily replaced even on the fly. I hope to utilize it more in the future, but only time will tell.

ClockworkPi DevTerm

Biostar FX9830M NAS

At the end of 2020 I upgraded my NAS server to Biostar FX9830M motherboard and throughout the year it served me pretty well. I feel that it is bit too noisy, however, changing the CPU fan is a bit challenging because of an unusual pin connector. Nevertheless, I would like to find some solution to address the problem in the future. Few solutions are in my head, from a bigger computer case to improve airflow to even fan-less solutions. Some of those would need a few creative approach on how to install them. 

Software wise Artix Linux proves to be pretty stable with a major issue being abrupt Linux kernel changes at times. The network interfaces were renamed twice for an unknown reason over a year or so, which was rendering my network aggregation configuration to fail, since it was relying on those names. Another more mysterious issue is likely related to dhcpcd or OpenRC init system in the a way that IP address is not assigned at boot, which is only solved by rerunning dhcpcd service manually (even reboot doesn't help). After that it usually works OK on subsequent reboots (happened twice or three times over a year and half). Finally, once it stopped working because of missing firmware. The solution was to install a separate linux-firmware-bnx2x package, though it wasn't required before. I guess these issues can be partially attributed to rolling release distribution approach with the most up to date kernel and software.

Akasa Cyper SPX case

This year I acquired Akasa Cyper SPX case to accommodate my ICOP VEX2-6427-5C4NE board. This case has openings to install 4 serial ports, which seemed a pretty good choice for me (considering my board has exactly 4 serial headers), but it ended up to be a bit of a disappointment. The inside design has a piece of plastic sticking out, which prevented me from installing serial ports with rectangle shaped frames in the far left and right openings. Thus, I ended up utilizing only the two middle ones. Something more lean and rounded is needed for the edge openings, which I hope to either find them or modify the ones I own in the future. Unfortunately, the Akasa page does not provide a compatibility list or requirements and their customer support is unresponsive.

The board itself is not Mini-ITX, but a much smaller 3.5'' single-board design, because of this I tried to utilize board pads and some glue with limited success. Though I managed to position it successfully, the board is not very firm, making attachment of USB devices a bit challenging.

ICOP VEX2-6427 board placed inside Akasa Cyper SPX case

Other devices 

I did mention some devices on the last review like Pocketbook InkPad Color 7.8 and AsRock DeskMini X300, however I didn't have enough time to do any useful review about them. Pocketbook is quite a nice e-reader device, but little slow, especially with big PDF files which are usually available in colours, limiting its usage. It feels like such devices should have stronger hardware, however it likely brings challenge to keep long battery usage and increases the price. 

DeskMini X300 is definitely a good choice for the mini computer, if limited expansion options are not an issue. CPU support was extended to Ryzen 5000G series over the time, thus it can opt very performant models. In my case, Athlon 200GE CPU is installed and it is virtually silent. Probably major limitation was that initial configuration didn't have WiFi, side USBs and audio jack at back (only at the front). ASRock provides its own sets for all, but they are pretty expensive and hard to get. For side USB/WiFi though third party options can be adapted.

Other than that, I had some smaller purchases, but those were usually required to facilitate certain setup, like mini-PCIe SATA controller with the flat ports instead of 90 degrees ones or more silent Cherry G80-3000N mechanical keyboard.

ASRock X300M-STX board inside DeskMini X300

Work on NetBSD

Last year I was honoured to become an official NetBSD developer, which gave an ability to contribute to the project directly! At the time of writing this review, I already did over 200 commits, however those were mainly non functional changes like misspelling fixes. Nevertheless, I did some bug fixes too. Likely the main achievement was to finally identify why R6040 MAC was failing to work on Vortex86DX3 SoC. It took me countless hours in the span of around three years of debugging, including temporarily acquiring on more DX2 based system, but I managed to find out that it was related to certain speed control register (MDC) being restored to wrong value after reset action. This issue appeared to be the same not only across all BSDs but in Linux as well. Despite the fact, that interface was working up to 5.3 kernel version by luck, it was because Linux didn't check BMCR register on identifying the link state. That changed starting 5.3, thus R6040 MAC stopped working in Linux as well. Fortunately solution was just to restore MDC value back to original value leading to restored functionality. Just recently this change was applied to OpenBSD and FreeBSD as well, thus R6040 should should work properly on VortexDX3 SoC in all BSDs and Linux (I guess FreeBSD driver will be synced to Haiku OS code at some point). It was the first fix, which was actually reapplied to all major operating systems and motivates me to continue on such efforts. Other than that, I did few other fixes, mainly in drivers, I also did various testing/investigation work, wrote some missing documentation. Unfortunately, time constraints prevent me to work on some drivers more seriously, but I still have few projects in my mind, hopefully over the time I will manage to implement them. Nevertheless, I plan to stay an active member.

 

Future developments

I do not plan any major hardware purchases this year, however some upgrades and changes are possible. The main focus will likely to stay on the NetBSD project, which comes closer to branching netbsd-10. This may lead to more testing and debugging work and potentially some help in different areas. I am still trying to debug interrupt issue on Vortex86DX3 systems. On the other hand, I still dream to dig up and revive at least one of my Alpha machines. Hopefully, DevTerm will find more usage as well. Though I don't expect much articles in the next 6 months, I will make an effort not to be completely silent and share more interesting developments.

The final NAS setup

This is a follow up article to my previous post on the NAS upgrade to the Biostar FX9830M motherboard. As soon as I received all required components, I spent the first available evening to assemble the new setup. As mentioned previously, I decided to utilize my old InWin BM639 case instead of buying a new one to save the costs. In the end, I believe, it may even stay as a permanent solution, since I am pretty satisfied with the end result. My final setup is:

• Biostar FX9830M motherboard with AMD FX-9830P Bristol-Ridge APU/CPU.
• 2x G.SKILL F4-2666C19S-8GNT 8GB RAM (16GB RAM in total).
  
• Kingston HyperX FURY SHFS37A/240G SSD for the system OS.
  
• 2x Toshiba MG04ACA600E 6TB hard drives for the data.
• Dell QLogic 57810 dual port 10Gbit SFP+ network adapter (Dell 540-BBGS) attached to switch using passive copper DAC cables.
  
• InWin BM639 case with 160W (IP-AD160-2) PSU.

Dell 540-BBGS 10Gbit SFP+ network adapter

Motherboard placement to the case

I hit the major obstacle as soon as I tried to place the motherboard inside the case. It is 1.3 cm wider than mini-ITX/mini-DTX standard, thus it was hitting internal PSU. The case hadn't enough space in between to fit. Fortunately, it provided an option to remove just the top part of the case, which gave me an opportunity to exchange the PSU position on the top of the case instead. The stability of such placement comes from the fact that cables are connected pretty tight to motherboard and the PSU has a slide at the bottom by design, which allows to fix it at one corner of the case. It is a workaround and it is not the best solution definitely, but it works pretty well. Once PSU obstacle was solved, the motherboard fit in perfectly. PCIe interface occupies the second extension slot by design, thus only single slot cards can fit (though, by removing HDD cage, likely two slot low profile cards can be used). There are possible alternatives for PSU placement as well I believe to avoid the external placement, but they likely require some modifications to the case. I may investigate those options some time in the future.

Biostar FX9830M VER6.0 motherboard

Placing the hard drives

The second obstacle was to fit two 3.5'' hard drives and one 2.5'' SSD inside. By design it has one 3.5'' cage for HDD. Besides that, it was supposed to have the 5.25'' ODD cage as well, which occupies a big part of the front side of the case, however I likely lost it over the years (I replaced it with the big fan years ago). Because of this, I needed to think out of the box a bit on how to utilize space and, if possible, to avoid external placement. Regarding the SSD drive, I was initially planning to replace it with the Sandisk Extreme Pro 3.0 USB flash drive placed internally using USB 3.0 pin header, but it appeared that pin header is protruding too much to the left, thus hitting the CPU fan. What is more, I wasn't sure if flash drive is not too long vertically as well. Because of this, I decided to stay with Kingston SATA SSD. It had its own challenges because of physically damaged SATA port, but I successfully placed it vertically on top of 3.5'' cage by using holes designed to fix 2.5'' drive. Vertical position was required to avoid the bending of drive's SATA port by the rounded metal edge on the top of the HDD cage. Fortunately, this position wasn't obstructed by the network card as well, though it makes access to it a bit more complicated. The first HDD was placed in the cage itself as designed by the motherboard, thus it didn't pose any issues. Finally, I fixed the second hard drive on the original position of the PSU by fixing it with two screws on a back side frame of the case. Thus, all the drives were successfully placed inside the case, leaving only PSU outside of it. In theory, I still can even add one more drive on the front side instead of the front fan. It may affect the airflow inside the case though, because of this, such setup would need careful testing, especially in the summertime.

Toshiba MG04ACA600E 6TB HDD

As a side fact, two SATA ports are provided by the CPU chipset, another two by ASMedia ASM1062 controller. Non of them provide RAID support. Like I mentioned before, the second SATA port is also connected with the NVMe slot, thus only one of them can be used at the same time.

Network card needs low profile bracket

The final issue was caused by the fact that Dell network card wasn't supplied with the low profile bracket, though it is easily replaceable by the design (standard screws are used). Because of this, I needed to order one from the eBay, while placing the card without it temporarily. I was concerned if it would not easily pop out of the PCIe slot, luckily, however, it stayed very firmly in the position even during cable insertion/removal process.

The final arrangement can be seen in the picture below (before cable management):

Software adjustments

Software wise the Artix Linux didn't boot out of the box, but it was solved simply by recreating initial ramdisk environment, which had also been the typical way to resolve an unsuccessful update process in the past. To my surprise, the SSD drive worked very stable on the new system, despite its damaged SATA port. I didn't experience any boot issues, I could use all the HDD utilities like smarctl, hddtemp without causing system to stall! What is more, it finally utilized its full bandwidth potential, which was very noticeable during upgrade process. 

As initially planned, I replaced NetworkManager service with the dhcpcd and netifrc combination. It was a pretty simple procedure, since only /etc/conf.d/net file required few additional lines to setup bonding interface by the provided example. Once network was ready, I tested copying files between two systems with 10Gbit network, it reached around 165MB/s, which is considerably better than previous speed ranging from 40 to 70MB/s depending on network controller, but likely limited to hard drive capabilities. Because of this, RAID0 setup may be beneficial to increase download speeds even more, just it doesn't seem necessary for me currently. It is also easy to notice snappier file browsing experience. Additionally, I used iperf3 network testing utility which reached ~6.25 Gbit/s between two systems. 

iperf3 testing results

Finally, I could remove all the workarounds applied for the previous system, including enabling the kernel updates again.

BIOS 

The motherboard uses UEFI BIOS with the typical graphical setup controlled by keyboard or mouse. It does not provide as much options as as you may expect from usual desktop gaming motherboard, but it has some specific options which are likely suitable for a business environment and power users (TPM, security, virtualization). For my specific case, I probably mainly missed more controls over fan speed and other power saving features. The motherboard fan is usually very silent but can become noisy on high CPU usage. Also, I didn't find an option to disable main AUDIO device (Realtek ALC887) (except the one from the GFX device). Dell network card supports EFI, thus I changed Network device to prefer UEFI boot instead of legacy one. BIOS provides an option to choose boot device by clicking F9 or enter BIOS flasher with F12 (no BIOS updates are available as of yet). In general, it is still an improvement over old legacy BIOS in Jetway motherboard but may disappoint more demanding people.

I also made a mistake, once I disabled internal NIC controller. It changed link's enumeration number from enp3 to enp2 which I failed to notice initially, thinking it's a possible BIOS bug and reporting it to Biostar. Actually, only simple network reconfiguration was needed.

FX9830M BIOS main screen

Conclusion

In conclusion, the full upgrade process from the hardware side to the software one went quite smoothly. The motherboard proved to be almost compatible with the Mini-DTX cases, with the PSU placement being a major concern. In my case, I resolved it quite easily due to highly modular case design. The final result is considerably stable and faster system with the big potential to utilize it in few different ways, which were not possible previously. I still plan several improvements like data encryption and cold backup in the near future. I am also waiting for the low profile bracket for the network card and a low profile COM bracket which will occupy the upper empty slot (I use serial console in some occasions) to complete the setup. Considering the successful setup with the InWin BM632 case, I started to have doubts about the need of replacing it with Fractal Design Node 304 or similar case, as I initially envisioned. I believe, I will likely look into all other options first before doing such purchase. As of today, the main concerns are to reintroduce double backups, better secure the data and utilize the new system for routine actions which I am doing either manually or using scripts. And hopefully, the system will serve me no less than the one it replaced!

NAS upgrade to Biostar FX9830M board

Intro

Despite my recent projects and various minor hardware updates on the old NAS server, which you can read about in my previous blog posts, I have been already looking around for the major hardware update. I was not sure how long the search will take due to reasons I will explain shortly but the aging system was being pushed to its limits and it was only a matter of time before stability, performance, requirements, and other factors will start to drift away from the reasonable levels. In addition to those factors, I was constantly upgrading my other hardware, including gradual upgrade to 10Gbit based local network. Better utilization of it outside simple technology playground and testbed,  were complementing motivational factors to spend additional resources on NAS modernization, which would allow me to focus on its main purpose instead of putting most of efforts for workarounds and patches just to keep it running reasonably well. 

Inside Jetway JNF-76 based NAS system

The search

The market changed quite a bit since the time I bought Jetway JNF76 back in 2009. Introduced by VIA Technologies mini-ITX form factor was still quite strong, various solutions were available ranging from home to industrial/embedded market. Specialized online computer shops selling such hardware were still in business. Once I started looking for the new board a year or so ago I noticed that most of the stores I've used to buy such products are either gone or their business transformed into different directions. VIA Technologies itself also generally left the consumer market and x86 CPU business (I know that they have joint venture in China, but those solutions have zero availability outside China and I don't associate them directly with VIA anymore. As a proof of that, just recently VIA announced plans to sell its part in the joint company). It's not that the market completely vanished, there are new stores which sell similar products in the sea of other stuff but they are not that focused and specialized as before. On top of that, ARM based solutions started to push into small PC market but I am not completely ready to go in this direction yet and they usually don't have required specifications. Finally, this time I really limited my budget which forced me to look to home/end user solutions instead of ones server/embedded ones. Unfortunately, in this space motherboards surprisingly went away from mini-ITX form factor besides few pretty expensive gaming focused solutions or very cheap Atom CPU based ones, which have quite limited specifications. Mini-PCs seemingly moved mainly to custom size barebones or NUCs. Because of this, the right solution was really extremely hard to find with the requirements I expected to fulfill:

• At least 4 SATA III ports
• PCIe 2.0 x8 electrically (not just a physical slot)
• Energy efficient CPU, preferably soldered to motherboard and passively cooled.
• At least two USB 3.0 or higher ports
  
• Ideally mini-ITX form factor
  
• Small price (< 200 euros)
• Readily available

Biostar FX9830M motherboard took my attention as soon as it was announced early spring this year. It looked almost like an ideal solution, having PCIe x16 slot (x8 electrically), 4xSATA ports + M.2 slot, 2xUSB 3.0 (marketed as USB3.2 Gen1) plus internal header for 2 more. It checked most important ticks with some caveats: 

• Adding SSD drive to M.2 port disables one SATA port, thus making me to choose between setup of 4 hard drives + USB 3.0 system drive or 3 HDDs + 1 fast system SSD in the M.2 port.
• SATA controllers do not support RAID.
  
• AMD FX-9830P CPU TDP is 35W, which is a bit high (VIA U2300 is 5W TDP CPU + 5W for VX800 chipset). In addition, it is actively cooled.
  
• Serial port is not available in the backpanel (COM header exists though).
• Actual availability was completely missing till early/mid October both in my country or in the international online stores like Amazon. By the time of writing, it is still looks scarcely available, at least in Europe.
  
• The worst issue that I initially overlooked, that it is not mini-ITX form factor board, but a little bit bigger one, having 200mmx183mm dimensions instead of 170x170mm. 

Nevertheless, once I finally found a very small batch of these motherboards available in the local computer and electronics shop few weeks ago, I didn't hesitate much and decided to build new NAS system around this model. I deemed the points mentioned above non significant to my envisioned setup and adjustable in one way or another. The price of the board was a bit above 100 euros.

Biostar FX9830M motherboard

Overcoming the size issue

The motherboard size is not a microATX as claimed by Biostar, thus I did some research if it can fit some small cases (bigger than current one but smaller than microATX). It almost conforms with mini-DTX size, but requires extra 1.3cm width, since mentioned form factor size is 203x170 mm (width matches with mini-ITX). Since the motherboard doesn't conform to any actual form factor, Biostar simply labeled it as microATX one, though full size microATX (244x244 mm or 4 expansion slots) case would be definitely a waste. It would definitely fit into DTX case but this AMD proposed form factor didn't gain popularity, thus marketing team probably decided to avoid mentioning it. Considering the size of the board, it became clear that it likely fits into some mini-ITX cases with two expansion slots (considering the mentioned a little extra width is available which may not be always the case). Fractal Design Node 304 solution seems to be one of the best options to consider, since it officially supports mini-DTX and can accommodate up to 6 hard drives, which is perfect for my NAS server needs. From the videos and photos available I am not completely sure if extra width won't be hindered by PSU frame, but the frame looks removable in the worst case (combined with SFX/TFX/picoPSU instead of traditional ATX one). To save initial costs though, I decided to utilize my old InWin BM639 case, which was used for my VIA EPIA-M900 board based computer in the past. It happens to have two slots and fits the board with some workarounds.

InWin BM632 case

The network setup

As mentioned before, one of the main motivational reasons was ability to utilize local 10GBit network. This decision was accelerated by few important recent purchases. The major one was MikroTik CRS309-1G-8S+IN 8 port SFP+ 10Gbit switch. It was supplemented by Asus XG-C100F Aquantia AQC100 based SFP+ network adapter. The Asus card was important because it is supported by NetBSD (and FreeBSD). It enabled me to completely switch to 10GBit interface on my main computer. In addition, I have previously acquired Dell QLogic 57810 10Gbit double SFP+ port Ethernet card. This particular network adapter will be transferred to NAS server, thus it dictated the requirement for PCIe 2.0 x8 slot. Since it has two ports, network aggregation can be utilized in similar manner as the current 1Gbit setup (Mikrotik switch supports interface bonding from its side as well). Finally, I still have Tehuti TN4010 based Edimax EN-9320SFP+ adapter bought back in 2018, which allows me to connect one more computer when/if needed.

Mikrotik CRS309-1G-8S+IN

Asus XG-C100F

Storage setup

The original plan was just to transfer my original setup: 2x6TB hard drives plus 2x3TB drives in LVM RAID0 setup for the second backup. Backup drives are initially synchronized using rsync software once a day, though at different time frame for each backup. Unfortunately, just before the purchase of the new board one of my old 3TB HDDs died. Thus, only new 6TB drives will be used from day one. In the future, I plan to go back to the double backup, however I am not sure yet what will be the final setup in this case (I can see few options: manual sync as before, or RAID0+1 setup (using LVM), or separate cold backup using USB3.0 or network). For the system drive I currently planning to switch from SATA SSD, to USB3.0 SSD drive placed inside computer case using Delock USB3.0 pin header. This decision is mainly driven by damaged SATA port on current system SSD drive, which I believe is causing some stability issues. Besides that, initial plan was to utilize all 4 SATA ports by data HDDs until recent failure. 

Software wise the main operating system will stay Artix Linux with OpenRC init system. Additionally, I am planning to introduce full data encryption. Finally, considering the need to configure new network interfaces, I may switch to dhcpcd/netifrc instead NetworkManager for DHCP client and network management to simplify my software stack and use partially familiar tools (dhcpcd is default DHCP client in NetBSD).

Bonus improvements

Very important expectation is increased stability of the system. Though current system wasn't particularly unstable once booted, but it had serious issues on the boot process itself, mainly because of ADPE4S-PB daughterboard and likely also because of damaged SATA port on system SSD drive. It was partially circumvented by using my very old external PCI SATA controller but it had limited system performance (theoretically SATA I but in practice twice or more slower because of drivers), still wasn't 100% stable and had limited expansion capabilities. FX8300M motherboard has mature AMD platform which is well supported by Linux kernel, thus stability should not be an issue anymore. Same applies to Dell network card which I have tested in my personal computer for several months. As a bonus, much higher CPU performance will allow me to focus and NAS related configurations (encryption, NFS, samba, RAID) and various additional background services and scripts (rsync, fossil-scm, git, torrents, streaming, filtering, folding@home at certain occasions, etc). Additional perks include more modern UEFI BIOS with reacher configuration and boot options, possibly higher hard drive capacity support (though I haven't hit the limit with JNF-76), USB 3.0 for additional flexibility on external storage, SATA 3 instead of SATA 2 (VIA chipsets have never upgraded to SATA 3 for some reason). Very fast PCIe 3.0 based SSD in M.2 slot is also an option for system drive in the future, that is in case I won't need all 4 SATA ports. And finally, the board supports up to 32 GB of RAM (initially opted 16GB), which should be more than enough for NAS server including any additional services. I really hope to use this system for similar timeframe as original one, which is around 10 years or more. 

 

I am planning to write a follow up article once setup is ready.

2019 in review

Starting last year I resumed writing yearly review after a long break. Since 2019 was no less active in various personal computer related projects, I believe it may start a tradition of such retrospective reviews for the years to come. So without further ado, I will move on the last year's activities.

Downgrade from Radeon RX 460 to Radeon R7 370

For almost two years, I used the AMD Radeon RX 460 GPU based Asus Dual RX460 OC edition graphics card. However, since 2019, I started using NetBSD much more regularly alongside with Manjaro Linux (which is still my primary OS) and, unfortunately, Radeon RX 460 GPU is unsupported by the former. Because of that, I decided to downgrade to an older generation hardware, so I can be comfortable in using them. After a broad research, I opted for the GIGABYTE GV-R737WF2OC-2GD which is a Radeon R7 370 based card. R7 370 uses Pitcairn Pro GPU core based on the 1st GCN architecture. The main motivation behind choosing this specific model was its similar performance to RX 460, its reasonable price and its availability in stock at local stores.

Despite some fears, the card didn't disappoint. NetBSD immediately recognized the GPU and applied proper drivers giving the expected hardware acceleration. Because of this, I started using NetBSD on my desktop quite regularly. To my surprise, it visually felt more responsive than RX 460 on Linux as well. Despite being an older model, its performance is actually at par with the replaced card in general usage, except possibly increased power usage.

Dell QLogic 57810 10G Ethernet card

Since my router supports one SFP+ 10Gbit Ethernet port, I was curious to try it out and bought the Edimax EN-9320SFP+ 10Gbit network card back in 2018. Though, being the cheapest 10Gbit solution at that time with the smallest card around, it had few annoying flaws. The card was based on Tehuti TN4010 NIC, which is poorly supported by the alternative operating systems except Windows. Any of the BSDs don't have a driver at all. Linux has one, but not in the mainline kernel. Thus, the Linux driver needs to be compiled and installed manually, and the process needs to be repeated almost after every kernel update (which happens relatively often). In the end, the Linux driver still had at least one issue - if computer goes to standby mode, NIC stops working after resume with only reboot bringing it back. Nevertheless, I was not planning to replace it, since alternatives were too expensive (especially Intel based solutions). Btw, Edimax also have never updated the driver in their page, I was using the one from github.

Unexpectedly though, one local shop offered Dell QLogic 57810 (Dell part 540-BBGS) dual port 10Gbit network card for a sizable discount. I checked that it was supported by at least FreeBSD, the Linux kernel had mainline kernel driver as well, so I took the bait and bought it. The card itself is much bigger than Edimax, having an active cooler and requires PCI-E 2.0 x8 slot instead of PCI-E 2.0 x4. On the other hand, it is a way more professional product having sophisticated firmware and two SFP+ ports. Once installed, it worked out of the box in Windows, Linux and FreeBSD, with no manual work required. Contrary to Tehuti NIC, it had no issues on resume in Linux as well. In general, I believe this purchase was pretty successful, except the fact that it is not supported by NetBSD.

I dream to port the FreeBSD driver to NetBSD, however, it may be too complicated task, since the driver is huge. Nevertheless, I am planning to make an attempt this year (sometime in 2020) and see what happens.

Dell QLogic 57810 dual SFP+ Ethernet controller

Toshiba MG04ACA600E and D-Link DGE-528T

Yet another hardware update was already extensively described in my blog. Though, the main goal was just to upgrade from 3TB hard drives to 6TB ones in my NAS server, it ended up with the bigger project from migration to Artix Linux to LVM RAID configuration on recycled 3TB drives.

The new hard drives were two identical Toshiba MG04ACA600E model drives which showed quite visible performance improvement in read operations but write speed seemingly was restricted by driver issues and showed only minimal improvement compared to older drives. Thanks to LVM RAID0 setup I also reused older 3TB drives as additional back-up storage.

Realtek RTL8169SC based D-Link DGE-528T network card was used to circumvent loss of the second Ethernet port. Together with integrated Realtek 8111C NIC it showed worse network speed over Intel based daughterboard card, but it was expected and acceptable downgrade.

Toshiba MG04ACA600E

Sanwa MA-TB41S trackball

For around ten years I was successfully using Kensington Optical Orbit trackball. It was bought in Sweden by my former colleague and friend. Initially I thought that it will stay only as an experiment, but proved to be one of the best devices I've ever used. Unfortunately, the right button started to fail so badly by the end of the last year, that I was finally forced to look for the possible alternative. Despite pretty limited trackball options, I must admit it was one of most challenging decisions on hardware selection process. The main reason for that was the lack of possibility to try them physically. I believe, there is a great risk of to buy uncomfortable trackball from the images only. It doesn't matter how much reviews you will read, there are too many factors which can affect the comfort, from your hand size to device quality and sensitivity. That is probably the reason why you can find so many contradicting opinions on the same product.

Theoretically I could even buy the same model, since Kensington is still selling it together with few other long-living models, but I wanted to find one with the scroll wheel. After long research I narrowed down the options to these three models:

• Elecom Deft Pro (M-DPT1MRBK)
• Kensington Orbit with Scroll Ring
• Sanwa Supply MA-TB41BK/S

Though, Sanwa trackball was my last choice, I ended up buying it because of difficulty to find Elecom model in Europe, and relatively bad reviews regarding the quality of Kensington trackball buttons. Unfortunately, I can't tell yet if I made a right choice... During, the first month I was really disappointed. The trackball appeared to be a bit too big for my hand, making it difficult to reach buttons comfortably. Quite often I was accidentally moving the ball before clicking mouse buttons, thus easily missing intended button or other UI element. Scroll wheel was too slow, too big and clunky. My hand was constantly getting tired. Nevertheless, I started to get used to it over the time, thus decreasing the strain of the hand and increasing precision. Though, the scroll wheel still stays as the biggest inconvenience, since it was the major feature I had been looking for. It works, but scrolling is very slow and reaction time after rotating the wheel visibly lags behind. Furthermore, my thumb gets painful and tired easily, even over the time I haven't really gotten used to it. Honestly, I am not sure, if I will keeping using it, I may switch to a regular mouse or try the Kensington Orbit trackball with the scroll ring. It is probably the most unsuccessful hardware purchase in 2019.

NetBSD

I was quite active in the NetBSD project community this year: I managed to port IC Plus IP1000/1001 PHY driver from OpenBSD (used by many VIA EPIA boards, also IC Plus own network cards), fixed support for VIA VX800 (and possibly VX855, VT8237S) SATA controller (previously partially working in IDE mode only), 4World USB to Serial adapter (already mentioned in 2018 review), found the fix for the Biostar X370GT5 SATA controller locking issue, requested to pull-up the fix for D-Link DUB1312 USB network card to NetBSD 8 release. In addition, I noticed and identified the applied fix for the long standing bug on Ryzen system, where the OS was failing to identify a second SATA hard drive. This bug was causing to stall even UEFI POST process on reboot. Fortunately, this fix made it into NetBSD 9.0 release. Also I noticed some typos and white-space issues in the code. Finally, I updated the seemingly abandoned Codelite IDE package in pkgsrc to build the latest stable version at that time (from 9.1 to 13.0). Despite these successes, I also had some let-downs. I couldn't fix the USB and Ethernet issues on eBox 3352DX3-AP computer. I found a workaround to make Ethernet controller work, in case SMP and ACPI is disabled, but the proper fix is still unclear. Besides that, once suddenly Fnatic Gear Rush keyboard stopped working, with the help of NetBSD developer I identified that it was caused by accidental switch to 6KRO mode. It appeared to be working in NKRO mode only (which was the opposite up to NetBSD 7.1 release). Hopefully, it can be fixed to work on both modes in the future. Seeing quite a successful last year, I hope that I will be able to solve some issues in 2020 as well.

eBox 3352DX3-AP 

The last chapter I will dedicate to some insights on how to run BSD system on eBox 3352DX3-AP VortexDX3 based system, since I promised that on the last review.

FreeBSD 12.0 works the best out of BSDs, which can perfectly boot on default BIOS configuration. The only issue is the integrated network controller (R6040) which fails to work. This issue is common to all BSDs, since drivers are based on FreeBSD one. Similarly to the described below workaround on NetBSD, it may be also applied for the FreeBSD. By removing all the vte_reset() calls in the driver and recompiling a custom kernel, it should make the network work. Unfortunately, the latest release at time of writing (12.1) introduced some regression which causes instant failure on boot. I submitted the bug report but I don't expect it to be resolved soon. So, in case FreeBSD is a preferred choice, I recommend to run 12.0 release. Alternatively to editing and compiling the custom kernel, USB based network controllers can be used to enable the network.

OpenBSD is probably on the worst situation. I identified only one way to boot into the system without kernel recompilation by disabling "ACPI aware OS" option in BIOS. However, neither USB nor Ethernet works, which renders the system usefulness limited to some local automatic jobs only. It can boot with ACPI enabled/IDE in legacy mode by recompiling kernel without DIAGNOSTIC option. SMP works in both cases. If you want to work with OpenBSD for any reason, I would recommend to look for the system with COM ports (or try to solder the one).

NetBSD support is somewhere in the middle among the three. In order to boot the system with "ACPI aware OS" option enabled in BIOS, IDE should be set to "legacy mode". Otherwise, various timeout exceptions will occur and system will fail to boot. Similarly to OpenBSD, neither USB nor network will work in this case but both CPU cores (SMP) will work without requirement to rebuild the kernel. Booting with ACPI and SMP disabled (boot -12) will give USB support. Furthermore, it is possible to make network work in this case as well, but removing vte_reset() calls in if_vte.c (R6040 driver) and rebuilding your custom kernel. In case loosing SMP and ACPI are acceptable options, it makes a fully working system. Unfortunately, a workaround for the network didn't work for OpenBSD (more specifically, it actually does work, but network still fails to connect due to some other issue).

Summary and 2020

2019 was a pretty good year in the hardware/software context. Most of my projects went smoothly, and newly acquired hardware met or even exceeded expectations (except the trackball). It was also the most active year in NetBSD for me. Besides starting using it as Desktop operating system quite regularly, I managed to provide several patches to improve hardware support and provided my first contribution to pkgsrc project. I hope to keep this pace in 2020 as well, though time-constraint is my main enemy. Hardware wise, I don't have specific plans for 2020. I may upgrade to a newer Ryzen CPU and upgrade some other parts but non of these are a high priority. Like last year, such decisions probably will depend on pricing and unexpected deals. I do plan to revive my Alpha CPU based Microway PC164 Screamer system and I already have bought "old new" 8x32MB modules of SIMM RAM (Samsung KMM53616000AK-6) for it. Considering all these future plans, I believe that I will write at least a few articles this year, which I hope will be an interesting read.