CWWK/Kingnovy SFP+ trouble

[duckman]

So I bought this mini pc as an n100 after I have seen a review of it on STH's youtube channel.

Video:

Productlink:

New 12th Gen Firewall Mini PC Intel i3 N305 N100 Soft Router 2x10G SFP+ 2xi226-V 2.5G NVMe 2xHD DDR5 MiniPC NAS Server

CWWK is committed to developing a reliable, secure, and customizable firewall or VPN appliance for network professionals and enthusiasts.

cwwk.net

I installed opnsense on to the device, assigned and enabled the sfp+ interfaces, put them in a bridge with LAN 2.5Gbe, but they just won't work. If I plugin an SFP+ DAC Cable which is supposedly intel compatible, I see that the network card leds will glow (green glows permanently, orange blinks) but I get no connection to the firewall. I have tried setting the "hw.ix.unsupported_sfp" tunable to no luck.

Here is what's really weird though: if I plugin an SFP+ dac while 2.5gbe rj45 is connected, the mini pc will stop responding to anything. no web ui, no ping, nothing. As soon as I remove the cable, the mini pc continues to work as expected. If I just plugin in the SFP+ cable i can't access the internet or webui.

Any help on the issue would be appreciated. The switch i connect this mini pc to is a Mikrotik CRS312-4C+8XG-RM.

 

[F W]

My unit on this model has some problems too.

1. The "ACT" and "LINK" LED indicators for both 2 SFP+ slots are marked as opposite.

2. The "Power" and "HDD" LED indicators are marked as opposite.

3. The M.2 slot on the RAM side (the one with "M.2 WIFI" sticker) does not work properly. Installing NVMe SSD (with the included adapter) sometimes causes the system not able to boot up. If managed to boot up, any disk operation (ex. partitioning, formatting) would cause system crashing or disk missing. I've also tried installing an Intel Wi-Fi adapter instead of a SSD, and found the system could not utilize the Wi-Fi adapter correctly (Wi-Fi connection failure/Wi-Fi adapter missing).

I had no choice but to only use the M.2 slot on the CPU side, which is not very convenient to access. This system originally has few PCIe lanes, and the M.2 slot on the RAM side is wasted.

 

[duckman]

My unit on this model has some problems too.

1. The "ACT" and "LINK" LED indicators for both 2 SFP+ slots are marked as opposite.

2. The "Power" and "HDD" LED indicators are marked as opposite.

3. The M.2 slot on the RAM side (the one with "M.2 WIFI" sticker) does not work properly. Installing NVMe SSD (with the included adapter) sometimes causes the system not able to boot up. If managed to boot up, any disk operation (ex. partitioning, formatting) would cause system crashing or disk missing. I've also tried installing an Intel Wi-Fi adapter instead of a SSD, and found the system could not utilize the Wi-Fi adapter correctly (Wi-Fi connection failure/Wi-Fi adapter missing).

I had no choice but to only use the M.2 slot on the CPU side, which is not very convenient to access. This system originally has few PCIe lanes, and the M.2 slot on the RAM side is wasted.

1. 2. I noticed those issues too. and for 3 mine didn't even come with an adapter :/

 

[F W]

1. 2. I noticed those issues too. and for 3 mine didn't even come with an adapter :/

I bought the barebone model, and the M.2 SSD adapter was pre-installed in there. However, it doesn't work. Through my tests, the problem is not the included adapter, but the M.2 slot on the motherboard. Because M.2 Wi-Fi card (without using the SSD adapter) can't work correctly either.

For your issue, there are a few steps you can try:
1. Do not create any bridge. Try one of the SFP+ as a dedicated interface (setting it as the "LAN" interface in OPNsense), see if it works.
2. If 1. worked, try only bridging the 2 SFP+ (but no 2.5G), see if it works.
3(a). If 2. works, add the 2.5Gs into the bridge (may do it one by one).
3(b). If 2. doesn't work, delete the SFP+ bridge, try only bridging the 2 2.5Gs (but no SFP+), see if it works.
...

Connect a display monitor and keyboard directly to the unit. When you plug/unplug the SFP+ DAC, is there any system message shown in OPNsense? When ping and web UI become unavailable, is the directly connected keyboard still working (system crash)?

 

[duckman]

I bought the barebone model, and the M.2 SSD adapter was pre-installed in there. However, it doesn't work. Through my tests, the problem is not the included adapter, but the M.2 slot on the motherboard. Because M.2 Wi-Fi card (without using the SSD adapter) can't work correctly either.

This must be specific to your model then because mine detects the wifi card (that I put into the slot on the ram side).

For your issue, there are a few steps you can try:
1. Do not create any bridge. Try one of the SFP+ as a dedicated interface (setting it as the "LAN" interface in OPNsense), see if it works.
2. If 1. worked, try only bridging the 2 SFP+ (but no 2.5G), see if it works.
3(a). If 2. works, add the 2.5Gs into the bridge (may do it one by one).
3(b). If 2. doesn't work, delete the SFP+ bridge, try only bridging the 2 2.5Gs (but no SFP+), see if it works.

3b. worked

Connect a display monitor and keyboard directly to the unit. When you plug/unplug the SFP+ DAC, is there any system message shown in OPNsense? When ping and web UI become unavailable, is the directly connected keyboard still working (system crash)?

I did this and the system actually freezes. As soon as I unplug the cable it all continues and I get an error about some timer being expired.

 

[F W]

This must be specific to your model then because mine detects the wifi card (that I put into the slot on the ram side).

My Wi-Fi card can also be detected, but using it to connect to a SSID will trigger it unable to connect or device missing.

I did this and the system actually freezes. As soon as I unplug the cable it all continues and I get an error about some timer being expired.

So this only happens when you mix bridge SFP+ and 2.5G? What about a pure SFP+ bridge? Does the DAC still freeze the system?