FreeBSD 10.1: Intel dual port 10GbE card (82599EB) second port not present? (Steven Hartland)

[John Jasen]

> Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2015 20:47:15 +0000
> From: Steven Hartland <killing at multiplay.co.uk>
> To: freebsd-net at freebsd.org
> Subject: Re: FreeBSD 10.1: Intel dual port 10GbE card (82599EB):
>     second port not present?
> Message-ID: <54DBBFD3.7010801 at multiplay.co.uk>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed

<snip>

> Your problem looks like its the SFP's which are "unsupported" to which
> the attach will fail with error EIO (5).
>
> You can set hw.ix.unsupported_sfp=1 in /boot/loader.conf to enable
> unsupported SFP's but be aware you "doing so your on your own".

Thanks! hw.ix.unsupported_sfp=1 corrected the immediate problem.

The network port that didn't come up does not yet have an SFP module
installed

It seems the default behavior in FreeBSD is to not have the interface
available until a SFP is inserted. While a corner case, this does make
configuration prior to installation a bit more annoying.