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[deltaend]

We wish to get the Hyper-V Linux Integration Services 2.1 synthetic network drivers to work correctly under Pfsense 2.0+ (FreeBSD).  To claim the bounty, you must get the drivers working and either get them into the SVN for Pfsense 2.0+ official builds, or provide a quick and easy method of installing them ourselves into future versions of Pfsense 2.

I should also note that we will not award this bounty until we load and stability test the system to watch for any crashes and/or load issues due to the hacked driver.  We expect about 1-4 weeks of testing before we actually award the bounty after bounty fulfillment.

[cmb]

Linux is vastly different from FreeBSD and I don't believe MS provides anything there for FreeBSD, at least not that I've been able to find. If they did, that would be an achievable bounty. Porting something for Linux to FreeBSD is vastly more involved, possibly to the extent of nearly rewriting it all from scratch. That could easily be a few hundred hours of work.

[deltaend]

Linux is vastly different from FreeBSD and I don't believe MS provides anything there for FreeBSD, at least not that I've been able to find. If they did, that would be an achievable bounty. Porting something for Linux to FreeBSD is vastly more involved, possibly to the extent of nearly rewriting it all from scratch. That could easily be a few hundred hours of work.

Possibly... although someone might come up with a really cool trick in how to make it work.  Alternatively if someone did slave away at it for a really long time to get it to work and got paid peanuts for it, it would still enhance the community at large as we would want to make the results publicly available.  Either way I'm sure that if someone is motivated it can get done.  I would also be willing to negotiate the price a bit.

Either way, you are correct to say that it isn’t an easy thing one way or another.  Otherwise I would have taken care of it myself.  If it can be done though, not only would it make my life easier, but it would enhance Pfsense considerably.

[cmb]

Sure, I agree, just explaining it's extremely unlikely anyone would be willing to take you up on it because of what's involved.

[deltaend]

Well, here's hoping!

I did get a PM from someone.  I wish him luck.

[cmb]

Well, here's hoping!

I did get a PM from someone.  I wish him luck.

Yeah, me too!

[lleroy]

Hello guys,

Do you have any update with this topic ?
Anyone with interest or working on this ?

[deltaend]

I got contacted by one person who offered to do it, but they wanted to play some (not so funny) bidding game where they say the words "convince me" and I'm supposed to indefinetely increase the bounty until I get scammed out of a massive amount of money.

In the realm of those people who take this seriously and understand that I'm not here to hire a team of professional developers for what this would probably normally cost, but rather help to make those who are already interested do some development by paying for pizza monies, no I haven't talked to anyone yet.

I will post an update for the bounty though.  It is now $600.  If you can finish development before January 1st 2012, than the bounty is $1,000 for the first person to submit a working and stable driver.  As before, we will award this after 4 weeks of stability tests to ensure it works correctly.

[lleroy]

Thank you for the quick reply.
I will ask my company to help increase the bounty.

[jaredadams]

A quick question.  And this may be a dumb one, but I have to ask.

On your Hyper-V VM are you using the regular NIC or Legacy NIC?

Legacy NIC works with pfsense.

[deltaend]

A quick question.  And this may be a dumb one, but I have to ask.

On your Hyper-V VM are you using the regular NIC or Legacy NIC?

Legacy NIC works with pfsense.

The legacy NIC is limited to 100Mbps.  That is the major reason why we wouldn't want to use it.

[mikhug]

Im increasing the bounty with $900.

Were having some issues even with the legacy one - they dont see any arp of the hosts sometimes.

/M

[ermal]

If it goes up to 3000$ i would give this a shot.

[deltaend]

Well, we are half there.  $600 + $900 = $1500.

[zootie]

I with I could contribute to the bounty, but alas, I'm only acting as a hobbyist right now and can't afford to contribute funds at this time.

As to why it would be nice to have this
* The synthetic network driver provides better performance overall (both bandwidth and turnaround and lower CPU usage)
* Features like VMQ (VMDq) are exclusive to synthetic adapters (and legacy adapters can't connect to the same network, effectively requiring to have separate network cards for legacy and synthetic VMs - meaning that for simple networks, pfSense might be the sole non-Windows VM requiring 2 dedicated network cards, while everything else runs off a single team).
* Simpler Hyper-V setup (ie, being able to team and use vlans with a simple Hyper-V switch setup).

And some notes that might help someone more familiar with pfSense and FreeBSD get started:
* CentOS supports the synthetic driver. See  http://www.howtoforge.com/installing-linux-integration-services-v2.1-hyper-v-r2-on-centos-5 and http://bugs.centos.org/view.php?id=4752
* It can be installed using dkms, per MS KB 2387594 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2387594