Got a question that will hopefully have a simple answer that I just haven’t dug up the answer to. Also the OpenWRT forums are kinda scary.
I have a Minisforum MS-01 that I want to use as a dedicated router with its very cool 4 network ports. OpenWRT is my Router OS of choice (Tried Opn/PFSense, didn’t care for them, personal preference and familiarity are the main factors). Flashing a small NVME drive with the base OpenWRT x64 image lets me use the two 2.5Gb RJ45 ports no problem, but I can’t for the life of me find what package(s) to install to use the onboard intel 10GBE SFP+ NICs. From what I’ve been able to glean, their drivers are different than a standalone intel 10GBE card with the same two ports, but I can’t figure out what package I need to install to get OpenWRT to recognize them.
And when I say they’re currently not recognized, I mean in the LUCI Web UI they aren’t shown on the main dashboard page, and in the Network → Interfaces → Devices page, when adding a new network device, they aren’t listed as available devices in the configuration wizard.
If anyone knows what package to install to get the OS to recognize them it would be super helpful.
What’s scary about their forums?
Anyway the 10gbit ports are from an intel x710. So you need to install kmod-i40e
Just a friendly warning, I have been running a virtualized version of OpenWRT for a few years now, and quite frequently updates have broken. My advice is to find a supported consumer router to run OpenWRT, and save yourself a lot of headaches.
What did break? Why would a router image not break? Its still the same distro
What I meant by “broken updates” (firmware updates) is that about half of them, three out of six, would fail to install properly. I’d then have to spend hours troubleshooting why the update failed and trying to fix it.
OpenWRT also isn’t really designed or supported for the x86 platform. It’s primarily intended for consumer-grade routers, not general-purpose x86 hardware.
As previously stated the module name is i40e so the package should be named kmod-i40e.
I have the same model running NixOS. I’ve inspected the card details with lspci -vv.
Both SFP+s are similar:
06:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Ethernet Controller X710 for 10GbE SFP+ (rev 02)
06:00.1 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Ethernet Controller X710 for 10GbE SFP+ (rev 02)
The 2.5s are:
5b:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Ethernet Controller I226-V (rev 04)
5e:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation Ethernet Controller I226-LM (rev 04)
Both the 2.5 uses the igc driver. Just a heads up: if you want to use the vPRO IPMI included in the MS-01 you need to set the -LM interface as up in the OS but without any IP address. On the IME settings that can be accessed from bios it is recommended to use a static ip.
(Also wtf happened to the text reply box in this forum. I tried to be too smart with my markdown and ended up making a mess)
Besides the mentioned OSes…if you like Mikrotik RouterOS, they sell it for x86. Good old image and just run. Can transfer license to other machines too…CHR (Cloud hosted Router) is payed on how much bandwidth you need…so might be okish price.
I really learned to love and like RouterOS from Mikrotik ever since I bought a switch from them. Got 4 devices (2x bare metal, 2x VMs) now running RouterOS. And I’d go for RouterOS over pfSense/OPN now every time. Local app+Web config+ CLI login…very flexible in administration.
Just a tip.
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More like it expects you to use the x86 platform the same as you would an embedded router.
Openwrt will blow up the same way on arm, mipsel and Power architectures if you run a full system level package upgrade like its Debian.
its packages are more for the build system to customize and assemble a firmware image, and some small user customization on a running system. There is no handling of service restarts on package upgrade for example. Any system level update is expected as a full firmware image installed through the firmware upgrade procedure.
This makes perfect sense for an embedded device, that simply does not have the storage space and has to keep most of the system in a read only highly compressed squashfs partition. For x86 its not a concern, but openwrt is built for embedded first and only.
Within these constraints its fine and stable. I’ve used it in a vm or on real hardware for a long time and its been used as a base by projects like OpenMPTCProuter (that does offer x86 images) or by NethSecurity firewall https://nethsecurity.org/ (that only offers x86 images)
These constraints are one of the main reason the project set up the firmware Selector page with a backend to allow you to customize the firmware image before you download it.
And later on the device itself you can use the same infrastructure to request a customized image with your currently installed packages Testing to determine if you are a bot!
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