Atom C2758 on borrowed time?

[scp]

I have a Supermicro C2758 running PFSense as my main router, on gigabit fiber with an OpenVPN server. It's been freaking amazing since I deployed it and I just assumed I could keep it going forever. I was totally out of the loop on all the discussions of the Atom C2000 AVR54 bug that renders them unbootable, and I'm starting to read up on the issues now. I'm confused as to how I should handle this. I know mine was made in the time period affected by the bug, but I've not experienced a failure. It's been over a year since my last reboot of this device.

Am I sitting on a ticking time bomb here?
Is it destined to fail at any moment?
Should I start looking for a replacement device that I can swap in its place?

There are a number of motherboards that look like drop-in replacements to this chassis (CSE-505-203B). I could snag something here or on eBay that would fit, and keep using the chassis, PSU, SSD (maybe not RAM). If that was the route I went with, what would the suggestion be? There is a C3000 series Atom, a D1508, Xeon 2100 / 2200, i3, etc. I've read that some of these configurations dont make a lot of sense for PfSense, so I'd need to choose carefully, rather than just throwing the "fastest" thing in there I can find.

TIA for any help or suggestions you might have.

 

[mmo]

I've RMA'd all my C2000 boards to SM for AVR54 check/fix. You can choose "cross-shipment" if you don't have spare board for your router. They will send you an updated version of the board (i believe it's 2.0) without the bug.

 

[scp]

I've RMA'd all my C2000 boards to SM for AVR54 check/fix. You can choose "cross-shipment" if you don't have spare board for your router. They will send you an updated version of the board (i believe it's 2.0) without the bug.

That's good to know. Did you just use the RMA request form online? I just filled that out, hope they will still take care of it.

 

[BlueFox]

Supermicro won't take RMAs on some of them at this point unfortunately. They denied one of mine recently since they apparently don't fix boards over 5 years old. Early C2000 boards are from 2013/2014.

 

[T_Minus]

I have 3 on my shelf I got SM to upgrade.
Plan is to use 1 for new pfsense, and 1 for storage (maybe need to test).

If updated I wouldn't worry

 

[mmo]

Supermicro won't take RMAs on some of them at this point unfortunately. They denied one of mine recently since they apparently don't fix boards over 5 years old. Early C2000 boards are from 2013/2014.

I RMA'd one on 5/13 without any issues, but good to know they stop it for aged boards.

 

[mmo]

That's good to know. Did you just use the RMA request form online? I just filled that out, hope they will still take care of it.

Yes. i submitted my RMA's request online, I just put in AVR54 bug check/fix in the description.

 

[scp]

I did the RMA process for a cross ship a couple days ago. I filled out the form, signed a letter, and paid a Paypal invoice for the deposit. They have already shipped the new board. So far, so good.

 

[Serverking]

Atom C2000 AVR54 bug

Is there a similar bug for D-1541?

 

[Evan]

Is there a similar bug for D-1541?

doesn’t affect d-1500, d-2100, c3000 products.

 

[Scarlet]

Thanks for the reminder, I just sent my last C2758 board to Supermicro EU (for repair)

Last year the turnaround time was about 4 weeks, let's see how long it takes this time.

Edit: both of my c2000 boards actually failed within about 4 years of 24/7 duty each. The symptoms that I could observe: the system would turn on but would not boot. I could not see a CPU temp in IPMI, all other IPMI sensors were ok.

 

[scp]

All done. New board installed, old board shipped off. Man, that was easy. I must have made the cutoff because they didn't give me any hassle at all.

 

[Kaishi]

How were you able to boot pfsense on your Supermicro system? I have one, and I haven't been able to get it to cooperate with anything other than Windows 10 in weeks of attempts.

I have a thread about it: https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/booting-pfsense-on-5018a-ftn4-server.30523/

 

[ske4za]

This might be the signal for me to see if I can still send in mine, currently on pfSense duty, to Supermicro as I totally forgot all about it.

 

[scp]

How were you able to boot pfsense on your Supermicro system? I have one, and I haven't been able to get it to cooperate with anything other than Windows 10 in weeks of attempts.

I have a thread about it: https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/booting-pfsense-on-5018a-ftn4-server.30523/

I have no idea. I just made the USB stick according to their directions. I think I used Win32 Disk Imager, and made sure on boot up that the USB drive was used to boot. I have an SSD connected to the board and installed to that. I don't recall having to do anything unusual.

 

[Kaishi]

I have no idea. I just made the USB stick according to their directions. I think I used Win32 Disk Imager, and made sure on boot up that the USB drive was used to boot. I have an SSD connected to the board and installed to that. I don't recall having to do anything unusual.

My board boots from USB or ISO without issue, in either UEFI or BIOS-compatibility mode. It performs the install just fine. But it cannot boot the installed environment post install. That's been my issue. I'm trying to figure out which config (UEFI-mode or BIOS-mode) other folks are using. I know this is a very popular platform for network devices, so I can't figure out why I'm struggling with it.

 

[scobar]

How were you able to boot pfsense on your Supermicro system? I have one, and I haven't been able to get it to cooperate with anything other than Windows 10 in weeks of attempts.

I have a thread about it: https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/booting-pfsense-on-5018a-ftn4-server.30523/

Clear CMOS and try again. If that does not work then flash bios and reset to defaults. I've had a handful of SM boards that seem to need extra steps to boot from USB or behave as one may expect. Once they are configured and running then they just run.

 

[poisonvodka]

Reviving slightly dead thread here. If you can get it fixed in RMA I highly advise doing so. I've had 2 identical pfsense boxes die in the last 3-4 months thanks to this bug. Be aware in my experience both times were after I wanted to restart it to troubleshoot some network "quirkiness" (possibly related to the failure, not sure), then after restart both times wouldn't POST. Both had ~200-300+ days of uptime prior.

Just know if its one of the c2758 boards and has not been repaired, any reboot could be its last. I didn't know about this defect after the first one and threw it in a closet, when the second identical one in a different environment failed it made me do some reading and saw this unfortunate issue. For the second one supermicro is still covering it under RMA (I think I have to pay shipping one way), and even allowed me to do an advanced RMA with a credit card hold. Not bad after ~4 years at least

My board boots from USB or ISO without issue, in either UEFI or BIOS-compatibility mode. It performs the install just fine. But it cannot boot the installed environment post install. That's been my issue. I'm trying to figure out which config (UEFI-mode or BIOS-mode) other folks are using. I know this is a very popular platform for network devices, so I can't figure out why I'm struggling with it.

It's been a little while since I setup a c2758 but IIRC I did it in BIOS mode not UEFI, or maybe had to disable secure boot for the first boot then it worked fine. I never had any real problem deploying it. I've even reloaded pfsense on these style boxes a few times for major updates and never had problems then. I hope you got it figured out.

 

[Kaishi]

Reviving slightly dead thread here. If you can get it fixed in RMA I highly advise doing so. I've had 2 identical pfsense boxes die in the last 3-4 months thanks to this bug. Be aware in my experience both times were after I wanted to restart it to troubleshoot some network "quirkiness" (possibly related to the failure, not sure), then after restart both times wouldn't POST. Both had ~200-300+ days of uptime prior.

Just know if its one of the c2758 boards and has not been repaired, any reboot could be its last. I didn't know about this defect after the first one and threw it in a closet, when the second identical one in a different environment failed it made me do some reading and saw this unfortunate issue. For the second one supermicro is still covering it under RMA (I think I have to pay shipping one way), and even allowed me to do an advanced RMA with a credit card hold. Not bad after ~4 years at least



It's been a little while since I setup a c2758 but IIRC I did it in BIOS mode not UEFI, or maybe had to disable secure boot for the first boot then it worked fine. I never had any real problem deploying it. I've even reloaded pfsense on these style boxes a few times for major updates and never had problems then. I hope you got it figured out.

I haven't been able to get it to work, actually. I'm not sure what's wrong but I'm ready to try different storage devices.