Astaro Security Gateway ASG 220 appliance

covacat

covacat

i bought one because it was relatively cheap (50Euros + 10shipping)
see images https://forums.freebsd.org/members/covacat.67479/#profile-post-4563
the box is manufactured in 2010

changed the original CPU (E1500) to E8400
quirks
inserting a bootable freebsd stick will lock the box hard (while in bios)
i evaded the problem by setting the efi partition active and have boot0cfg to boot
initially i had no idea why it locked up i think it did not like the stick (which is more power hungry than a vanilla one) but after copying memstick-mini.img to another one (which did not lock the box before)
it had the same problem

so i could boot and played a bit in live cd mode
fan noise is REALLY annoying so im searching for a solution to manage the fans rpms (bios shows they are around 10k, mbmon shows double that but it's probably wrong)
dmesg attached
 

Attachments

1680153969806.png
 
covacat said:
fan noise is REALLY annoying so im searching for a solution to manage the fans rpms (bios shows they are around 10k, mbmon shows double that but it's probably wrong)
Click to expand...
If they are temperature controlled, try setting
Code: 
performance_cx_lowest="Cmax"
economy_cx_lowest="Cmax"
in rc.conf and add the cpuctl and coretemp modules to your kld_list while you're at it.
Allowing the CPU to utilize its C-states should bring down temperatures (and power consumption) quite a bit and slow down the fans as a side effect. You might also want to try running powerd(8) or sysutils/powerdxx, but if C-states are working there's usually not much additional gain in reducing the core frequencies.
Without C-states this CPU is a 65W space heater (TBH, even *with* C-states this thing burns quite a lot of power given its relatively 'moderate' computing power...), so the fans *have* to spin at high speeds to keep it below its very low Tcase of 72.4°C.

Depending on what you are paying per kWh, something like those topton N5105 based appliances (selling @ ~140EUR + some RAM and SSD) would pay off in less than a year while easily being able to saturate a GBit link... I'm running one of their 4-port variants as my main router at home and it draws only ~13-15W from the PoE switch at normal loads.
 
fans are controlled by a winbond superio chip
see superio(4)
powerd does not work, have to look closer in bios (it has the estN not recognized problem)
 
covacat said:
fans are controlled by a winbond superio chip
see superio(4)
powerd does not work, have to look closer in bios (it has the estN not recognized problem)
Click to expand...
did you load the cpuctl driver?

OTOH, that CPU might be too old or doesn't support setting the frequency.
After setting cx_lowest (and rebooting) check the output of sysctl dev.cpu | grep cx_usage. You should see the supported C-states and their usage in percent. If that's working I wouldn't bother playing around with powerd as it really doesn't bring down power usage or temperatures any more. Tried this recently with a few servers and differences with/without powerd or powerdxx running vs only C-states was <5W (for systems that run at ~100-150W at low loads, so those 3-5W could be normal fluctuations as well)
 
the box draws 70W at idle and close to 100 in full load for both cores
after ill replace the 7200 rpm barracuda with a ssd will be somewhat lower
there is a C1E enable function in bios but does not seem to change anything
still "CPU supports Enhanced Speedstep, but is not recognized."
 
after reading lots of winbond / nuvoton datasheets (the chip providing hw monitoring) i found that the fans do not have a pwm pin so...
i connected a fan with PWM to the fan jumper and i was able to control the rpms with the tool i devised
i can buy two pwm enablend 40x40x28 fans with 10 euro both of i can hack the existing ones
has anybody done something like this before ?
a pwm controlled dc 2 dc power source like this
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdhF4ZEcZTI&ab_channel=REES52
is $1
 
ok, i rolled my own entry in ESTprocs[] in /sys/x86/cpufreq/est.c and now it works
Code: 
static freq_info C2D_E4600[] = {
        FREQ_INFO_PWR(2400,  1340, 200,  57600),
        FREQ_INFO_PWR(2000,  1177, 200,  51000),
        FREQ_INFO_PWR(1600,  1013, 200,  44000),
        FREQ_INFO_PWR(1200,  850,  200,  36833),
};

static cpu_info ESTprocs[] = {
        INTEL(C2D_E4600,        2400, 1340, 2400,1340, (INTEL_BUS_CLK*2)),
it would be nice if this stuff could be pushed in via a tunable, kinda sucks to rebuild GENERIC for it
difference between max and min is about 10W measured
i had to ditch the E8400 becuase i could not make the board boot with more than 1GB ram with that cpu
this was the best I had that works. also tried an E6xxx which did not work
 
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