Apparent fxp regression in FreeBSD 8.4-RC3

[Michael L. Squires]

I'll have access to the test box on Tuesday, will test a fixed IP number 
then.  I'm unable to test that here since reinstalling 8.4 on the NAT box 
will require eventually reinstalling 8.3-RELEASE and I'm not the only one 
using the NAT box for Internet access.

The test box had 8.3-RC3 installed from a downloaded 8.3-RC3 CD using 
installation from the CD and with all binaries taken off the CD.  No 
changes were made after installation and reboot.

I agree that this seems to be a problem only experienced by those still 
using the fxp interface and DHCP on a certain subset of Supermicro 
systems, which has to be a very small group.

I did find one other reference to a similar problem at

http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=61102.0)

However, one of the posters was using 8.3p7 which predates my 8.3p8.  The 
posters also report that this issue affects only a small subset of similar 
machines and can be solved by either changing the boot order of the 
connected systems (not possible for me) or by forcing fxp to 100Mbit full 
duplex, which I haven't tried.

I definitely don't want this issue to hold up 8.4-RELEASE; if it is a 
problem it can be fixed for those affected with a patch after release.

Mike Squires
mikes at siralan.org
msquires at iga.in.gov (where the test box lives)