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The repository holds what is true now: the drivers, every measurement, every finding. It does not hold how any of it was reached - and that took close to two years, most of them before the first line was published.
This wiki is that story. It starts with an XG 330 that had run OPNsense for a long time and an XGS 136 that would not show it a single port; it goes through eight months of looking, a first XGS 3300, adapters that failed, reverse engineering from the vendors' own open sources, and an attempt at a firmware of my own that ran into a board of many chips. Then it turns - to the road everything stands on today, the host learning to speak the coprocessor's language - and from there the repository's own history takes over.
Tip
The one rule I keep: when the road in front of you is blocked, take an hour off and do something completely different. The answer shows up on its own.
| chapter | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Two computers in one box | Why OPNsense finds every port on an XG 330 and none on an XGS |
| 2 | The XGS 136 arrives | Taken apart on the first day, run on its own OS, and a decision |
| 3 | Eight months of looking | A survey: other vendors' appliances, teardowns, sources - in the evenings |
| 4 | The first XGS 3300 | A new chapter, a board named after the XG 330, and adapters that failed |
| 5 | Reverse engineering, from the open sources | The vendors' own published code, and a lesson about reading literally |
| 6 | A firmware of its own, and a board of many chips | Why replacing the coprocessor's software was the wrong road |
| 7 | The host and the coprocessor | The turn, and the first commit |
| chapter | ||
|---|---|---|
| 8 | Fourteen ports on the XGS 136 | A coprocessor held in reset, and eighteen megabits to a full gigabit |
| 9 | The XGS 3300 and the last hop | Nineteen dead ends, a grant, and a tag that was never right |
| 10 | From ports to offload | pf's connections and IPsec handed to the coprocessor |
| 11 | An appliance again | The installer, Arabic, releases, and three appliances on one bench |
| Installing | The image built, written and installed, the ports assigned at the first boot, the first login - step by step, with photographs |
| The pages | Every page the project adds to OPNsense, photographed on an appliance in English and in Arabic, and what each one is for |
| Photographs | Every published photograph of both appliances, each linked to its story; all of the repository's images are indexed in docs/images |
| Measurements | The figures that mark where the project is, each with a photograph of its run |
| Timeline | Close to two years, in one table |
| How this project works | The rules the work paid for |
The project: os-xgs-npu · the image builder: xgs-image-builder · what changed in each release: CHANGELOG