ASUS NUC 13 Rugged - cannot make working

[EVAgames]

Hello, I'm new on forum but with OPNsense more than 5 years. Usually my deployments end with some ITX board on RACK case. Some old i3 4xxx serries and few intel i210/i211 NICs. Sometimes cheapy realtek. Newer models with N100 are very cool, power usage wise and heat.

But currently I bought ASUS NUC 13 Rugged (BNUC13BRFA400B00IW) to try. Total disaster. It installs fine (some ACPI errors, had to use debug.acpi.disabled=1) . Even works few days. But then all the magic arrives. Whenever you give some load (in my case download even RHEL 5GB iso). WAN stops working. Gateway is offline, no errors, warnings in logs. NIC is online. fw_log incicate that requests sent, but gateway offline.

You can simply unplug wan network cable, and plug it again - everything works again for couple of hours.

CPU: Intel® Atom® x7425E
RAM: 8GB DDR5-4800
2 x Intel® Ethernet Controller I226-V
SSD: tried installing into eMMC and M.2 500GB WD_BLACK SSD
Provider: tried two providers. Both provide FTTH optic. One is using GPON based converter to cooper and DHCP assignment, other standard SFP optic converter and static IP assignment.

Tried disabling pretty much everything in BIOS. No change.

[Seimus]

Did you try:

A. Upgrade the BIOS
B. Upgrade the Microcode

Regards,
S.

[EVAgames]

Thank you for Your reply. Yes, I have latest BIOS and tried meyergru tutorial on microcode. Microcode loaded, updated. Even verified. Currently testing "clumsy" setup:

Installed Windows 2019 Hyper-V, loaded all drivers. Created VM with OPNsense and added VLANS on hypervisor level (WAN+2x LAN) as VM interfaces. Quite overkill but still working. Even reach near 2gbps.

So I'm stuck at something not supported on the FreeBSD side. I would say that maybe I could try compiling latest driver for i226V? A bit overkill too, I would say.

[meyergru]

I had something similar with a Minisforum MS-01 that uses I226 NICs as well. The solution was to disable ASPM in the BIOS. Seems like some misconfigured sleep modes cause a total hangup in these NICs.

[Seimus]

If those two things are up to date, than as mentioned by @meyergru above.

Go to BIOS settings and disable ASPM per the NIC/Interface, disable it for all of them. These settings are usually left on auto and it tents to cause problems.

Regards,
S.

[EVAgames]

Thank You everyone for help. Tried disabling ASPM, changing PCIe settings. Disabling cores, intel speedstep. Updated to latest opnsense. changed ram, enabled/disabled ECC. Nothing. Tried locking interface speed to 1gig, 100mb.

Also noticed that when using this NUC 'Input Errors' are huge on both interfaces. For now I would state that tis NUC is unusable with opnsense. Unless it is used as hypervisor to host it.

Will try again, when ASUS release new BIOS.

[binaryanomaly]

Interesting thread, I just setup my NUC 13 rugged today. So far it's running fine.

The only weirdness I run into so far is that when I run speedtest on a machine download seems to be around 300-500 mbps where as upload is approaching easily 2300 mbps.

Have you experienced something similar. Any idea what might cause this.

Edit:
iperf tests are fine (2.3 gbps) so the bad speedtest results might be an ookla or ISP issue. Otherwise everything is still running smooth here.

[binaryanomaly]

My Asus NUC 13 rugged is now running well since > 4 days.

So I'd dare to say that there isn't a general issue with NUC 13 rugged.

[EVAgames]

No, I didn't get any speed issues. Cannot say that is was stable 2.5gig, but near 2gig.
What BIOS version You're using? Any VLANs or IPsec tunnels?

[binaryanomaly]

I use 0039. I have 1 vlan.

I think I had a similar issue like you mentioned yesterday but I also recently activated CRC/TSO/LRO hardware offloading so this could be related. I switched it off again and will observe further.

[binaryanomaly]

I have observed the same issue as you described now 3 times (igc0) so likely it is a general issue. Suddenly weird behavior, plugging the cable in/out resolves it. I disabled ASPM and will keep observing.

Also still I seem not be able to get out consistently more than 300-500 Mbps download with speedtest-cli (which is weird I was able to get 8gbps before with my other machine and I'm on a 10 Gbps line. iperf does go to 2.5 Gpbs but something doesn't seem quite right.

Also I'm getting a ton of these filling up the log (might be unrelated though):

Code Select Expand


Firmware Error (ACPI): Could not resolve symbol [\134_SB.PC00.LPCB.ITE8.GETT], AE_NOT_FOUND (20221020/psargs-503)
ACPI Error: Aborting method \134_TZ.TZ00._TMP due to previous error (AE_NOT_FOUND) (20221020/psparse-689)


Otherwise I couldn't see anything suspicious in the logs yet.

If nothing helps I may try to install proxmox on it and run opnsense inside it.
Linux seems to be more reliable regarding modern hardware and driver support.

[EVAgames]

This NUC is great candidate for small powerful firewall, but probably not now. I'm running fine on hypervisor. Have other SSD with OPNense installed. Will try next time, when some major release is out. Maybe ASPM selection in bios has no affect. Wonder what changes will 0040 BIOS introduce.

[binaryanomaly]

Then I haven't had an issue again since 4 days when I deactivated ASPM.
Will update now OPNsense and observe further.

[binaryanomaly]

Edit: My download speed issues have nothing to do with the NUC 13 rugged. It seems that the media converter doesn't like converting from 10 Gbit down to 2.5 Gbit.

[OpenNonsense]

It's been quite some months meanwhile. Any new insight into whether the ASUS NUC 13 Rugged is stable with opnsense? Looking for a new box and was about to pull the trigger on an N50 Rugged short. But the experience in this thread does not look too promising - unless the machine was too new and not ready for stable operation, yet, but this has meanwhile been fixed?

Thanks.