[Soekris] OpenBSD and Net5501-70 'vr' issues?

[Stuart Henderson]

On 2008-05-21, K K <kkadow at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 10:24 AM, Moe Sizlak <sizlak1 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> As someone mentioned earlier the problem seems to be entirely vr driver related.
>
> This makes me concerned.
>
> We've had a couple of 5501's from KD85 running as simple Internet
> firewalls (OpenBSD 4.2 and 4.3) for a couple of months now with no
> reliability issues, and I just ordered four more systems for
> deployment on new installs where we need only a few megabits (6-16).
>
> Should we worry?

If it's plugged into a switch which stays up when the 5501 is up, no.
If you plug PCs which reboot often straight into the 5501, yes.

> I'd really prefer to avoid such a workaround, but if that is
> necessary, is there any particular dual-port card known to work well?

Everything I tried which physically fits has worked ok, but the
standard case is *just* too short for the Sun QFE or SysKonnect
1000baseSX in my pile... quad em(4) and dual fxp(4) have been
fine.

> Very disappointing.  Where's the best place to find and follow details
> for this problem?

There's been a bit of mention here and on an openbsd list (I think it
was tech@). I started to look at the freebsd diff (fixed in 1.129 ->
1.130 of http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/src/sys/dev/vr/if_vr.c)
but slightly lost interest as I'm only using them with a switch so
I don't experience too much pain from it...