HP T730 8GB RAM 32GB Storage Thin Client

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WANg

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Jun 10, 2018
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pfSense complains about not finding em0 and em1 and restarts so I can only look at the boot output as it scrolls by though it is pretty fast. FWIW, pfSense runs on the bare metal just fine.
Give the pfsense VM a vNIC and the passthrough NIC, and then see what happens. What you want to verify is:
a) Whether the passthrough worked or not
b) Whether the passthrough NIC was recognized by the OS and the drivers loaded correctly
c) Whether pfsense presented the passthrough NICs to the UI.
 

unmesh

Active Member
Apr 17, 2017
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So I added vmbr0 (the Realtek NIC) to the pfSense VM and it booted successfully with that port as em0/WAN but does not see the passed through Intel NIC ports. I'm posting the output of several shell commands from Proxmox in case it gives additional insight
# cat /etc/default/grub|grep CMDLINE
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet amd_iommu=on iommu=pt pci=assign-busses radeon.bapm"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""
# cat /etc/modprobe.d/pve-blacklist.conf
# This file contains a list of modules which are not supported by Proxmox VE

# nidiafb see bugreport 701 – kernel 4.1 does not boot on nvidiafb: unable to setup MTRR
blacklist nvidiafb
# igb to be able to pass through the Intel NIC to VMs
blacklist igb
# dmesg | grep -e DMAR -e IOMMU -e AMD-Vi
[ 2.398817] pci 0000:00:00.2: AMD-Vi: IOMMU performance counters supported
[ 2.398826] pci 0000:00:00.2: AMD-Vi: Applying ATS write check workaround
[ 2.401429] pci 0000:00:00.2: AMD-Vi: Found IOMMU cap 0x40
[ 2.401432] pci 0000:00:00.2: AMD-Vi: Extended features (0x800090a52):
[ 2.401437] AMD-Vi: Interrupt remapping enabled
[ 2.401731] AMD-Vi: Lazy IO/TLB flushing enabled
[ 2.402094] perf/amd_iommu: Detected AMD IOMMU #0 (2 banks, 4 counters/bank).
[ 7.015034] AMD-Vi: AMD IOMMUv2 driver by Joerg Roedel <jroedel@suse.de>
# lspci -nn|grep Gigabit
01:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Intel Corporation 82580 Gigabit Network Connection [8086:150e] (rev 01)
01:00.1 Ethernet controller [0200]: Intel Corporation 82580 Gigabit Network Connection [8086:150e] (rev 01)
01:00.2 Ethernet controller [0200]: Intel Corporation 82580 Gigabit Network Connection [8086:150e] (rev 01)
01:00.3 Ethernet controller [0200]: Intel Corporation 82580 Gigabit Network Connection [8086:150e] (rev 01)
02:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller [10ec:8168] (rev 15)
# lspci -k |tail -n 20
01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82580 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 01)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company NC365T 4-port Ethernet Server Adapter
Kernel driver in use: vfio-pci
Kernel modules: igb
01:00.1 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82580 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 01)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company NC365T 4-port Ethernet Server Adapter
Kernel driver in use: vfio-pci
Kernel modules: igb
01:00.2 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82580 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 01)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company NC365T 4-port Ethernet Server Adapter
Kernel driver in use: vfio-pci
Kernel modules: igb
01:00.3 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82580 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 01)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company NC365T 4-port Ethernet Server Adapter
Kernel driver in use: vfio-pci
Kernel modules: igb
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 15)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller
Kernel driver in use: r8169
Kernel modules: r8169
# lsmod|grep vfio
vfio_pci 53248 0
vfio_virqfd 16384 1 vfio_pci
irqbypass 16384 2 vfio_pci,kvm
vfio_iommu_type1 32768 0
vfio 32768 2 vfio_iommu_type1,vfio_pci
# lsmod|grep igb
#
# find /sys/kernel/iommu_groups/ -type l|grep 01:00
/sys/kernel/iommu_groups/1/devices/0000:01:00.2
/sys/kernel/iommu_groups/1/devices/0000:01:00.0
/sys/kernel/iommu_groups/1/devices/0000:01:00.3
/sys/kernel/iommu_groups/1/devices/0000:01:00.1
# cat 100.conf
agent: 1
boot: order=scsi0
cores: 2
hostpci0: 01:00,pcie=1
machine: q35
memory: 2048
name: pfSense
net0: e1000=B6:8A:2E:02:BE:39,bridge=vmbr0
numa: 0
ostype: other
scsi0: local-lvm:vm-100-disk-0,size=8G
scsihw: virtio-scsi-pci
smbios1: uuid=12db5094-2543-4e04-bb34-06d5fafd36e4
sockets: 1
vmgenid: 25e87ff9-97a3-4fc5-9092-c02376d7fef5
Finally, the only network interface that shows up in the output of "pciconf -lv" in pfSense is an Intel 82540EM
 

mimino

Active Member
Nov 2, 2018
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@unmesh Maybe try removing pcie=1.
I'm not quite understanding how could pfSense complain about not finding em0/em1 if it didn't even know they existed? Is this some installation you are trying to virtualize, or reusing old config?
 

unmesh

Active Member
Apr 17, 2017
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@unmesh Maybe try removing pcie=1.
I'm not quite understanding how could pfSense complain about not finding em0/em1 if it didn't even know they existed? Is this some installation you are trying to virtualize, or reusing old config?
New installation.

I booted up a Knoppix Live VM after my last post and it saw the ports with the card passed through so it looked like it was something with pfSense/FreeBSD.

Per your advice, I removed pcie=1 and it worked for pfSense!

Thanks
 
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leccelecce

New Member
Jun 25, 2021
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Hi all. I am currently on the hunt for a t620 plus or t730 at a good price on eBay.

One question I have that I've not really seen addressed here - what is the general experience on reliability of these boxes with medium use (I.e. not doing nothing, but not maxing out CPU/NIC all day long). I am keen on a "set it and forget it" that runs cool, quiet and reliable. Would put an Intel 4 port gigabit NIC and use it with a 1Gbps home fibre and failover to 4G with pfSense. Given have to purchase these second hand I'm curious about failure rate.

On a related note- do the fans spin on these constantly or do they spin down when temps are sufficiently low?
 
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CoolNight

New Member
May 9, 2021
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2
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I am using T620+ with one additional 2 port NIC, this thin-client is fanless and no noise also not hot. T730 actually is similar to T620+, only the CPU changed to AMD RX-427BB which much powerful then GX-420CA.
 

leccelecce

New Member
Jun 25, 2021
2
0
1
Sorry,
I am using T620+ with one additional 2 port NIC, this thin-client is fanless and no noise also not hot. T730 actually is similar to T620+, only the CPU changed to AMD RX-427BB which much powerful then GX-420CA.
Sorry, what do you mean fanless- Teardown clearly show the 620 plus and 730 have fans?
 

CoolNight

New Member
May 9, 2021
8
2
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Sorry,

Sorry, what do you mean fanless- Teardown clearly show the 620 plus and 730 have fans?
Sorry, T620+ & T730 all were installed with fans, but t620+ was very quiet, not sure about T730, for teardown details, you can serach in Youtube.
 

WANg

Well-Known Member
Jun 10, 2018
1,302
967
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New York, NY
Hi all. I am currently on the hunt for a t620 plus or t730 at a good price on eBay.

One question I have that I've not really seen addressed here - what is the general experience on reliability of these boxes with medium use (I.e. not doing nothing, but not maxing out CPU/NIC all day long). I am keen on a "set it and forget it" that runs cool, quiet and reliable. Would put an Intel 4 port gigabit NIC and use it with a 1Gbps home fibre and failover to 4G with pfSense. Given have to purchase these second hand I'm curious about failure rate.

On a related note- do the fans spin on these constantly or do they spin down when temps are sufficiently low?
I had my t730 on light/medium hypervisor duty (VMare ESXi 6.5 progressively updated) for the past 32 months (June 2018 to Feb 2021 - replaced by a t740) and then it acted as an emergency router in my office running pfsense for the past 4 months (had to deal with Checkpoint clustering which was neither fun nor quick). In both cases the t730 ran with an external PCIe NIC - in the case of its life as my hypervisor it first ran a Solarflare SFN5122, then with a 40Gbps Mellanox ConnectX-3 VPI. As the firewall/router it had a Broadcom Tigon based GigE quadport. Both were so trouble-free that I nearly ignore them unless a power outage brought them down, or if I needed to power them down to clean the internal air passages (which happens about once a year).

As for the blower, it only spins up when the CPU gets really smacked around and the thermals shoot up above 60 Celsius. Othewise it runs fairly quiet.
 

WANg

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Jun 10, 2018
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I am using T620+ with one additional 2 port NIC, this thin-client is fanless and no noise also not hot. T730 actually is similar to T620+, only the CPU changed to AMD RX-427BB which much powerful then GX-420CA.
It's not just the APU (which is much more power hungry on the t730). The early t620 Plus Yorktown boards have mSATA ports, while the later revisions and the t730s do not have them. The 730 has a RAM shroud while the t620 Plus does not. The t620/620 Plus uses MiniPCIe expansion ports in addition to the PCIe x4 (Gen2), while the t730s have M.2 A+E for attaching the optional fiber NIC in addition to the PCIe x4 (Gen3).
 

swinokur

New Member
Jul 7, 2021
4
2
3
Hey there,
I recently purchased a T730 off of ebay to build a new pfSense box.

I was wondering: has anyone else with FreeBSD (or PfSense) managed to figure out the magic to get the front speaker to work? I can get the speaker to work if I boot a Linux stick so I know the hardware is okay, but there's something about FreeBSD's audio setup that is thwarting me.

I ran into an issue with the drive that came with it -- that I think I have seen maybe other folks here have with these units purchased from ebay -- and thought I'd share my experience / solution:

the drive would appear to take a partition, format and filesystem. But after power cycling - all the data would vanish. I tried this several different ways and never was able to make the drive function properly.

The dealer on ebay was excellent and sent me a replacement.

That drive also had the same symptoms.

So I booted up parted magic and tried an ATA Secure Erase. The ATA secure erase software showed that the drive was frozen; putting the computer to sleep and waking it resolved that, and the drive secure erased properly. Before erasing smart tools reported ATA Security as "Disabled, Frozen [SEC2]" and after, "Disabled, Not Frozen [SEC1]".

Once I had done that, the drive would take a partition, a format and save data like a data-storage device should.

(the same trick did not work for the first drive, if anyone would like a "prank drive" to install on a computer let me know...)
 

WANg

Well-Known Member
Jun 10, 2018
1,302
967
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New York, NY
Hey there,
I recently purchased a T730 off of ebay to build a new pfSense box.

I was wondering: has anyone else with FreeBSD (or PfSense) managed to figure out the magic to get the front speaker to work? I can get the speaker to work if I boot a Linux stick so I know the hardware is okay, but there's something about FreeBSD's audio setup that is thwarting me.

I ran into an issue with the drive that came with it -- that I think I have seen maybe other folks here have with these units purchased from ebay -- and thought I'd share my experience / solution:

the drive would appear to take a partition, format and filesystem. But after power cycling - all the data would vanish. I tried this several different ways and never was able to make the drive function properly.

The dealer on ebay was excellent and sent me a replacement.

That drive also had the same symptoms.

So I booted up parted magic and tried an ATA Secure Erase. The ATA secure erase software showed that the drive was frozen; putting the computer to sleep and waking it resolved that, and the drive secure erased properly. Before erasing smart tools reported ATA Security as "Disabled, Frozen [SEC2]" and after, "Disabled, Not Frozen [SEC1]".

Once I had done that, the drive would take a partition, a format and save data like a data-storage device should.

(the same trick did not work for the first drive, if anyone would like a "prank drive" to install on a computer let me know...)
Eh, regarding the FreeBSD audio - hmmm, I dunno, how do southrbridge HDA drivers work n fBSD? My t730 is not available at the moment.

Huh. It just needs an unfreeze followed by a secure erase ? It doesn't surprise me now that I think about it.
They were thin clients, and most thin client OS mplement copy-on-write (ThinPro) or restrict writes (win7EB/10 IoT with the filter), so maybe HP implemented something that causes this type of behavior. Maybe HP has some custom firmware funkiness that implements CoW in hardware. I guess that's why most of my advice up to this point recommends swapping out the Sandisk M2 SSD with something else.
 

swinokur

New Member
Jul 7, 2021
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Eh, regarding the FreeBSD audio - hmmm, I dunno, how do southrbridge HDA drivers work n fBSD? My t730 is not available at the moment.

Huh. It just needs an unfreeze followed by a secure erase ? It doesn't surprise me now that I think about it.
They were thin clients, and most thin client OS mplement copy-on-write (ThinPro) or restrict writes (win7EB/10 IoT with the filter), so maybe HP implemented something that causes this type of behavior. Maybe HP has some custom firmware funkiness that implements CoW in hardware. I guess that's why most of my advice up to this point recommends swapping out the Sandisk M2 SSD with something else.
I posted the audio question over on the freebsd forum, but haven't heard back from anyone over there: Internal Speaker isn't associated with a PCM device

(The front speaker /does/ work with a linux boot stick, so this is clearly a driver or driver-configuration issue)

In terms of the SSD, I was ready to swap in another brand if the vendor's replacement couldn't be made to work. The "secure erase" trick was something I thought of at the last minute before I was ready to throw both of the U110s in a bin!

I've seen lots of SSD failures before but I've never seen the state where the drive looks like it is working properly (takes a partition, data can be written) - and then it all vanishes after a power cycle. There's also a surprising lack of documentation online about the U110 drives.
 

unmesh

Active Member
Apr 17, 2017
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Guys,

My T730 with 2 4GB SO-DIMMs has been sitting powered down with Proxmox installed on an internal SSD. Today, I booted it up and noticed that memory was less than 4G in the Proxmox GUI; the free command shows 3456952KB of memory.

BIOS shows 2 4GB DIMMs

I booted up Windows-to-Go on a USB stick and it says 8G installed, 3.45G available. The HWinfo app shows both DIMMs.

I tried using one DIMM at a time and ran memtest successfully, then put both back in and memtest was again successful. Now proxmox also sees 8G.

Any idea why this might have happened? It's not like the machine was vibrating and a DIMM moved out of its connector.

Thanks
 

WANg

Well-Known Member
Jun 10, 2018
1,302
967
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New York, NY
Guys,

My T730 with 2 4GB SO-DIMMs has been sitting powered down with Proxmox installed on an internal SSD. Today, I booted it up and noticed that memory was less than 4G in the Proxmox GUI; the free command shows 3456952KB of memory.

BIOS shows 2 4GB DIMMs

I booted up Windows-to-Go on a USB stick and it says 8G installed, 3.45G available. The HWinfo app shows both DIMMs.

I tried using one DIMM at a time and ran memtest successfully, then put both back in and memtest was again successful. Now proxmox also sees 8G.

Any idea why this might have happened? It's not like the machine was vibrating and a DIMM moved out of its connector.

Thanks
Eh, are they paired DIMMs, or 2 separate DIMMs with different timing/rank config?
Also, how much RAM was reserved for the Radeon integrated GPU?
 

unmesh

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Apr 17, 2017
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Identical HP branded pair of DIMMs

And the iGPU setting is Auto so I don't know how much it gets set to
 

Sealside

Active Member
May 10, 2019
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Stockholm/Sweden
Looking for some help and advice. I've had a T730 in the shelf for quite some time. Going to replace my current pfsense box with it, as of 2022 what sort of NIC should I try to get?
Solarflare, Mellanox or similar. I need SFP+ 10G but I guess it could work with a QSFP+ card with a converter. I think WANg wrote something about the Solarflare cards are running hot in this box, would an intel X520-Da2 work?
 
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tomsliwowski

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Jul 23, 2019
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Looking for some help and advice. I've had a T730 in the shelf for quite some time. Going to replace my current pfsense box with it, as of 2022 what sort of NIC should I try to get?
Solarflare, Mellanox or similar. I need SFP+ 10G but I guess it could work with a QSFP+ card with a converter. I think WANg wrote something about the Solarflare cards are running hot in this box, would an intel X520-Da2 work?
I've been running a x520-da2 in my t730 for a couple of years now. The only issue I have come upon is that without a small strip of kapton tape over pins 5 and 6 to mask the SMBUS the PC would not boot at all.
 
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Antec

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Dec 18, 2022
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I've been running a x520-da2 in my t730 for a couple of years now. The only issue I have come upon is that without a small strip of kapton tape over pins 5 and 6 to mask the SMBUS the PC would not boot at all.
Hi. Sorry, old post but I’m looking to install a x520-da2 into a t730 too. Can you give any more detail on this? Does this Need to be done on all x520-da2 in a t730? So just mask pins 5 and 6 in the pci pins yes?

how warm does the x520-da2 run for you?
 
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