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kevinds
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x86 Interfaces Missing

Fri Jul 08, 2022 1:12 am

Howdy,

During the last ISP outage here I tried to boot my laptop with RouterOS (x86) to act as a modem, updated to v6.49.6

My two serial ports and 56k modem did show as 'ports', two Intel NICs showed as ether1 and ether2..

WLAN (Broadcom BCM4352HMB) and WWAN (Sierra Wireless MC7355) were missing..

In this case, I only cared about the MC7355..

I've used Sierra Wireless WWAN USB adapters with RouterBoards before, so the drivers *should* be in RouterOS.. Am I wrong in this thinking?

Have I missed something to get the WWAN card to work?
 
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mkx
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Re: x86 Interfaces Missing

Fri Jul 08, 2022 6:58 am

Different platform builds of ROS include different drivers. So if you used MC7355 on a MIPSBE or ARM device, it doesn't mean x86 build will include those drivers as well.
 
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Larsa
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Re: x86 Interfaces Missing

Fri Jul 08, 2022 8:27 am

Native x86/64 installation is no longer supported, use CHR to get access to all device drivers.
 
kevinds
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Re: x86 Interfaces Missing

Fri Jul 08, 2022 8:33 am

Native x86/64 installation is no longer supported, use CHR to get access to all device drivers.
Huh? Source?

CHR has less hardware drivers than the bare-metal install does..
Last edited by kevinds on Fri Jul 08, 2022 8:41 am, edited 1 time in total.
 
kevinds
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Re: x86 Interfaces Missing

Fri Jul 08, 2022 8:36 am

Different platform builds of ROS include different drivers. So if you used MC7355 on a MIPSBE or ARM device, it doesn't mean x86 build will include those drivers as well.
If true, that is very, very frustrating..

It is listed here for example

https://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:Peripherals

https://help.mikrotik.com/docs/display/ROS/Peripherals

Nothing about different architecture having different driver support.
 
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antonsb
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Re: x86 Interfaces Missing

Fri Jul 08, 2022 8:49 am

is this still repeatable in v7? if yes - please contact support with supout.rif file.
information here is not all correct. Modems should be supported on all systems equally.
X86 installation is still supported.
 
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mkx
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Re: x86 Interfaces Missing

Fri Jul 08, 2022 8:57 am

Native x86/64 installation is no longer supported, use CHR to get access to all device drivers.
Huh? Source?

CHR has less hardware drivers than the bare-metal install does..
Perhaps somebody will actually dig out reference to the claim by @Larsa.
[edit] I see that @antonsb claims this is not true. However, there were many forum threads by users with problems with unsupported hardware, ranging from unsupported disk drives (e.g. SATA disks) to unsupported NICs (virtually all 10Gbps NICs fall into this category) and including support only for 32-bit installs (which imposes 2GB RAM limitation) and every time some MT staffer said that users should install CHR to overcome the problems. So in reality, x86 installs were not supported in the last 5 years (or more) even though officially x86 was not discontinued.

Traditional VM hypervisors didn't expose hardware directly to VMs, they provided pseudo hardware instead (e.g. virtio net NIC or IDE virtual disks) so CHR only needs to support those few virtual types of hardware. Recently VM hypervisors indeed started to support HW pass-through meaning VMs will have to support such hardware natively. With v7 there are better chances to see support for relatively recent hardware, with v6 this was lost case long ago due to hopelessly outdated kernel used (and I guess this was primary reason for practical discontinuation of support for bare-metal x86 / x64 installations).
 
kevinds
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Re: x86 Interfaces Missing

Fri Jul 08, 2022 9:12 am

Recently VM hypervisors indeed started to support HW pass-through meaning VMs will have to support such hardware natively. With v7 there are better chances to see support for relatively recent hardware, with v6 this was lost case long ago due to hopelessly outdated kernel used (and I guess this was primary reason for practical discontinuation of support for bare-metal x86 / x64 installations).
And I suspect that the future answer will be "don't use pass-through" ;)

My laptop is old though, nothing recent about it.. Two mPCIe ports and two other ports that I'm not using (one is another mPCIe, do not remember the fourth's form factor right now).. MC7355 is from 2012.. It had a MC7455 but it died a few years ago, so I put the MC7355 back.. Yes, it is time to look for a replacement, but I'm picky.. haha

I will try v7..
 
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Larsa
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Re: x86 Interfaces Missing

Fri Jul 08, 2022 9:14 am

is this still repeatable in v7? if yes - please contact support with supout.rif file.
information here is not all correct. Modems should be supported on all systems equally.
X86 installation is still supported.

Well, if that’s true I stand corrected but my advice is to update the wiki/help pages about what versions or Ros and hardware (on bare metal) that are still supported.

And in general the success rate is probably much higher using CHR rather than bare metal installation even on a laptop.

Regarding pass-though you won’t notice the difference on a single instance.
 
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mkx
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Re: x86 Interfaces Missing

Fri Jul 08, 2022 9:25 am

My laptop is old though, nothing recent about it.. Two mPCIe ports ...

For ROS v6 anything built around components newer than around 10 years is "new". Which includes mPCIe ... and OS needs some drivers to work with mPCIe bus, not sure if older PCI drivers support it.
 
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antonsb
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Re: x86 Interfaces Missing

Fri Jul 08, 2022 9:36 am


My laptop is old though, nothing recent about it.. Two mPCIe ports and two other ports that I'm not using (one is another mPCIe, do not remember the fourth's form factor right now).. MC7355 is from 2012.. It had a MC7455 but it died a few years ago, so I put the MC7355 back.. Yes, it is time to look for a replacement, but I'm picky.. haha

I will try v7..
Mobile/lte cards are USB peripherals - is there USB lines connected to that mPCIe port?
 
kevinds
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Re: x86 Interfaces Missing

Fri Jul 08, 2022 10:00 am

Mobile/lte cards are USB peripherals - is there USB lines connected to that mPCIe port?
Yes.... WWAN and WLAN both work great in other operating systems.
is this still repeatable in v7? if yes - please contact support with supout.rif file.
SUP-86589 created

v7 is a little different, but it still doesn't work.
 
kevinds
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Re: x86 Interfaces Missing

Fri Jul 08, 2022 10:23 am

including support only for 32-bit installs (which imposes 2GB RAM limitation) and every time some MT staffer said that users should install CHR to overcome the problems. So in reality, x86 installs were not supported in the last 5 years (or more) even though officially x86 was not discontinued.
v7 seems to have defaulted to x86-64 after the update. Showing
Free Memory: 15.5 GiB
Total Memory: 15.6 GiB

v6 was definitely 2GB RAM though.

It is odd though, System-Resources-Hardware has two options.. Multi CPU and Allow x86-64. Multi CPU is enabled, Allow x86-64 is not, yet RouterOS is still showing 16 GB RAM.
 
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Larsa
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Re: x86 Interfaces Missing

Fri Jul 08, 2022 11:00 am

Side note: IMHO I strongly urge MT focusing on v7 like fixing BFD rather than spending resources on legacy hardware.
 
kevinds
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Re: x86 Interfaces Missing

Sat Jul 23, 2022 11:09 am

So to follow up after engaging support..

Only Atheros WiFi chipsets are supported. Intel and Broadcom WiFi do not work.

Was able to eventually "see" the LTE device in RouterOS but never got it working..
 
kevinds
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Re: x86 Interfaces Missing

Wed Oct 05, 2022 1:45 am

Was able to eventually "see" the LTE device in RouterOS but never got it working..
v7.5 seems to have fixed it.
*) lte - fixed AT channel for Sierra Wireless modems with device ID 0x9091;
Mine is a different device ID, but it is now working.

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