# freeBSD 11.2 and intel B365 based motherboard ok?



## Panda (Nov 14, 2020)

Hi,
  I'm looking to install freeBSD 11.2 onto a home PC I'm am buying parts for and building.  I'm trying to figure out motherboard compatability.  From what i've read on the release notes and all, it seems like any reasonably current system should be ok, and it's just checking the peripheral components and the chipset driving them that can be an issue.  So I was trying to figure out, for example, if the storage controller would be ok.  According to the motherboard manufacturer's website, the B365 is controlling all of the SATA drives/devices.  I don't see intel B365 listed under supported storage controllers.

Has anyone successfully built a system using intel B365 mobo running freeBSD 11.2?
Is there anything I am missing in my quest to build the system?

My proposed system will be using an Intel i5-9400 on a ASUS TUF B365M-PLUS GAMING mobo, probably reusing a vertex 3 SSD, and putting an intel i350-T2v2 in each of the PCI 16 slots.  The onboard LAN for mobo is Intel® I219V so I am not expecting this to be a problem.  (I'm also planning on 16GB of DD4 2666, and a 500W power supply).  My goal is to install and run it as a pfsense firewall/router (DHCP,DNS,Suricata,PfBlockerNG etc...).

Thanks in advance for any info and successes or challenges.
I did a quick search and didn't find this discussed before, but appologize if somehow i've missed something already resolved.
Andrew


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## a6h (Nov 15, 2020)

FreeBSD 11.2-RELEASE End-Of-Life (EOL): October 31, 2019

Most Recent Releases: https://www.freebsd.org/releases/
Unsupported FreeBSD Releases: https://www.freebsd.org/security/unsupported.html


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## Emrion (Nov 15, 2020)

pfSense isn't FreeBSD and pfSense isn't supported here.

IMHO, you don't need such a killing machine to run pfSense. The only problem on which you may stumble is the wifi device if you have any.


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## aponomarenko (Nov 15, 2020)

Search for FreeBSD installations on B365 here: https://bsd-hardware.info/?view=search&name=B365

I see one installation of FreeBSD 12.1-p7 on this board currently. But this is for B365M.


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## Panda (Nov 15, 2020)

vigole said:


> FreeBSD 11.2-RELEASE End-Of-Life (EOL): October 31, 2019
> 
> Most Recent Releases: https://www.freebsd.org/releases/
> Unsupported FreeBSD Releases: https://www.freebsd.org/security/unsupported.html


Thanks for pointing that out vigole, and for the links.

I just double-checked and it appears for now i need to be compatible with 11.3... which is also EOL... at least the next version of pfsense looks like it will be based off of 12.1-stable, so that will be better... just no ETA on it.


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## Panda (Nov 16, 2020)

Emrion said:


> pfSense isn't FreeBSD and pfSense isn't supported here.
> 
> IMHO, you don't need such a killing machine to run pfSense. The only problem on which you may stumble is the wifi device if you have any.


Thanks for taking the time to respond Emrion.

My understanding is that pfsense is using FreeBSD as the base o/s it's running on.  On pfsense site, in section on putting together your own hardware to run pfsense, they say to make sure it's compatible with a particular version of FreeBSD, and things will be fine.  So I thought to ask for help in assessing if a particular proposed hardware setup would run FreeBSD 11.2, or if there would be problems.  It's also helping to educate me on FreeBSD.

I do appreciate that the system is overkill.  I am sure there will be some that can run it on a lot less of a machine for a much more demanding network too.  I'm trying to balance my hobby-time, my particular network at home, my use-cases, and my budget.  It is hilarious that this proposed system would be more powerful than my six year old desktop system (I'm not that great with time... it's an Intel i7-4790k)... i'm just tired of barely getting by on my new SG-3100.... would be fine except i am trying to run 3 instances of suricata, i'd like to run pfblockerng, it's also my DHCP server, NTP server, DNS server, etc...  i'm running multiple VLANS, multiple interfaces, everything is gigabit ethernet except for my internet connection, which is 66Mbps down/10Mbps up... the box i am currently using goes to 80% cpu utilization for lots of different use-cases, e.g. downloading a 30GB update for ESO... I am looking to the future when FTTH is hopefully going to come to my neighborhood and I can upgrade to 500Mbps down and up or 1Gbps down and 750Mbps up... that would break my current box very easily, let alone various use-cases where there are lots of traffic-intensive things going on at the same time.  I do think i could ease up on my mobo and cpu choices, but that being said, they are on sale right now (except for the intel lan cards of course).

Thanks for the tip about wi-fi.  I think some of the people using B365 based mobos aponomarenko link shows a simliar experience.  My intention is to run the system headless, and use the mobo ethernet interface for WAN connection (DSL modem) and the 4 ports from the two intel cards for VLAN'd LAN connections, and not using wi-fi on this system.

If you have any suggestions for say mobos and/or cpus I should consider, please let me know.


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## Panda (Nov 16, 2020)

aponomarenko said:


> Search for FreeBSD installations on B365 here: https://bsd-hardware.info/?view=search&name=B365
> 
> I see one installation of FreeBSD 12.1-p7 on this board currently. But this is for B365M.


Hi aponomarenko,
  Thank you for taking the time to respond, and for the very helpful link!  I think the naming on my proposed mobo is B365M as well, even though it's the B365 chipset.  I did try something like this yesterday, but i think i was over-complicating the search.  I think i tried "Intel" in the Vendor box as well as "B365" in the Name box, and it returend nothing https://bsd-hardware.info/index.php?view=search&vendor=Intel&name=B365#list .

  I'll try some more searches but not overthink trying to fill in all the fields :OP .

Thanks again.


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## Emrion (Nov 16, 2020)

Panda said:


> Thanks for taking the time to respond Emrion.
> 
> My understanding is that pfsense is using FreeBSD as the base o/s it's running on.  On pfsense site, in section on putting together your own hardware to run pfsense, they say to make sure it's compatible with a particular version of FreeBSD, and things will be fine.  So I thought to ask for help in assessing if a particular proposed hardware setup would run FreeBSD 11.2, or if there would be problems.  It's also helping to educate me on FreeBSD.



My point (and it's also the point of the admins here) is just that pfSense is built on a highly modified FreeBSD base. What you can learn from FreeBSD won't work on pfSense and vice-versa. This is why it's not supported here.

I use both FreeBSD and pfSense. My pfSense instance run in a bhyve VM and this VM has just 4 GiB of ram, two CPU and 10 GiB disk. My internet speed in 400 Mb/s in both directions on an internal network at 1 Gb/s. Yet, this VM is oversized. However, I don't use any plugin.


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