Recently, I was asked to repurpose a Sophos XG 106 device (Intel Atom E3930 processor, 4 GB RAM, 64 GB SSD, Intel i211 NIC). A lot of people probably already know where this is going... OpenWrt installed with no problem, but the behavior of the NIC was bizarre; it was detected by the OS, it could negotiate links (at least the indicator lights looked like links are being negotiated), but no actual data transfer would occur. I tried installing pfSense, but the NIC behavior was the same under that system.
So far, I am not telling anyone anything new; the i211 is a known pain in the behind. But then it occurred to me that OPNsense just put out a brand-spanking-new release 23. So on a whim, I installed it, and... (drum roll...) everything Just Workedâ„¢.
So... did I just get lucky or has some unsung hero upstream ironed out some of the i211 kinks, and it first propagated into FreeBSD 13 and OPNsense 23, and will eventually come to Linux and, by extension, to OpenWrt? Any informed guesses would be sincerely appreciated.
Did you test OpenWrt snapshot (kernel v5.15) or a general purpose linux (e.g. Debian/ bookworm) with kernel v6.1 (not necessarily as router, just enough to test all ethernet ports)? If either of those work, chances would be good.
OpenWrt installed with no problem, but the behavior of the NIC was bizarre; it was detected by the OS, it could negotiate links (at least the indicator lights looked like links are being negotiated), but no actual data transfer would occur. I tried installing pfSense, but the NIC behavior was the same under that system.