ifconfig
and
route
. That information is found in various other Linux documentation.
ether=
thing didn't do anything for me. Why?
The Ethernet-Howto contains detailed information on the current level of support for most of the common ethernet cards available. It covers common hardware configuration problems, and problems associated with choosing the right driver, and then getting that driver loaded and functional. It does not cover the next stages of setup (choosing an internet address, routing, etc). That information can be found in various other Linux documentation.
In the early days of linux, the old ISA type ethernet cards were the norm. The ISA bus had no sane or safe way for linux to determine what cards were installed, or what settings each card was to use. This meant that the end user was more involved in supplying this information to linux, and they turned to this guide for help on doing this.
Fortunately, the newer PCI bus can be found in nearly every computer that is out there today, and the ISA bus is left to collect dust with the 386 and 486 computers of yesteryear. The designers of the PCI bus recognized the problem with card detection on the old ISA bus, and so added support for each card to be able to communicate to the host computer their manufacturer and model, and what settings are to be used.
This slow demise of the ISA bus has reduced the involvement of the end user drastically. As such, most of today's linux users would not need to turn to this guide for help. However there are always some corner cases where things don't work as expected, or some problems that need troubleshooting. And of course there are still some old ISA computers out there doing thankless dedicated tasks in the bottom of dark closets too.
This present revision covers ethernet drivers found in kernels up to and including version 2.4.21. Some features pertaining to the upcoming 2.6 release are also mentioned.
The Ethernet-Howto is by:
Paul Gortmaker,
p_gortmaker @ yahoo.com
The primary source of information for the initial ASCII-only version of the Ethernet-Howto was:
Donald J. Becker,
becker @ scyld.com
who we should thank for writing a lot of the ethernet card drivers that are presently available for Linux.
This document is Copyright (c) 1993-2003 by Paul Gortmaker. Yes, I have been maintaing this thing for 10 years now! Please see the Disclaimer and Copying information at the end of this document ( copyright ) for information about redistribution of this document and the usual `we are not responsible for what you manage to break...' type legal stuff.
New versions of this document can be retrieved from:
or for those wishing to use FTP and/or get non-HTML formats:
This is the `official' location - it can also be found on various Linux WWW/ftp mirror sites. Updates will be made as new information and/or drivers becomes available. If this copy that you are reading is more than 6 months old, then you should check to see if an updated copy is available.
This document is available in various formats (postscript, dvi, ASCII, HTML, etc.). I would recommend viewing it in HTML (via a WWW browser) or the Postscript/dvi format. Both of these contain cross-references that are not included in the plain text ASCII format.
As this guide is getting bigger and bigger, you probably don't want to spend the rest of your afternoon reading the whole thing. And the good news is that you don't have to read it all. The HTML and Postscript/dvi versions have a table of contents which will really help you find what you need a lot faster.
Chances are you are reading this document beacuse you can't get things to work and you don't know what to do or check. The next section ( HELP - It doesn't work! ) is aimed at newcomers to linux and will point you in the right direction.
Typically the same problems and questions are asked over and over again by different people. Chances are your specific problem or question is one of these Frequently Asked Questions, and is answered in the FAQ portion of this document . ( The FAQ section ). Everybody should have a look through this section before posting for help.
If you haven't got an ethernet card, then you will want to start with deciding on a card. ( What card should I buy... )
If you have already got an ethernet card, but are not sure if you can use it with Linux, then you will want to read the section which contains specific information on each manufacturer, and their cards. ( Vendor Specific... )
If you are interested in some of the technical aspects of the Linux device drivers, then you can have a browse of the section with this type of information. ( Technical Information )
As a quick overview, you need to: 1) have a plug in ethernet card or motherboard that has ethernet support built in, 2) determine the brand or make and model of the ethernet card or on-board ethernet chip, 3) determine if a linux driver for this model of card/chip does exist, 4) locate and load this driver, 5) check driver output to verify it found your card, 6) set or configure network parameters for the newly detected network interface.
Okay, don't panic. This will lead you through the process of getting things working, even if you have no prior background in linux or ethernet hardware.
First thing you need to do is figure out what model your card is so you can determine if Linux has a driver for that particular card. Different cards typically have different ways of being controlled by the host computer, and the linux driver (if there is one) contains this control information in a format that allows linux to use the card.
If you don't have any manuals or anything of the sort that tell you anything about the card model, then you can try using the
lspci
utility for obtaining information on the PCI devices in your computer. Doing a
cat /proc/pci
gives similar (but less) information. For ISA cards, see the section on helping with mystery cards (reference section: Identifying an Unknown Card
).
Now that you know what type of card you have, read through the details of your particular card in the card specific section (reference section: Vendor Specific... ) which lists in alphabetical order, card manufacturers, individual model numbers and whether it has a linux driver or not. If it lists it as `Not Supported' you can pretty much give up here. If you can't find your card in that list, then check to see if your card manual lists it as being `compatible' with another known card type. For example there are hundreds, if not thousands of different cards made to be compatible with the original Novell NE2000 design.
Assuming you have found out that a linux driver exists for your card, you now have to find it and make use of it. Just because linux has a driver for your card does not mean that it is built into every kernel. (The kernel is the core operating system that is first loaded at boot, and contains drivers for various pieces of hardware, among other things.) Depending on who made the particular linux distribution you are using, there may be only a few pre-built kernels, and a whole bunch of drivers as smaller separate modules, or there may be a whole lot of kernels, covering a vast combination of built-in driver combinations.
Most linux distributions now ship with a bunch of small modules that are the various drivers. The required modules are typically loaded late in the boot process, or on-demand as a driver is needed to access a particualr device. You will need to attach this module to the kernel after it has booted up. See the information that came with your distribution on installing and using modules, along with the module section in this document. ( Using the Ethernet Drivers as Modules )
If you didn't find either a pre-built kernel with your driver, or a module form of the driver, chances are you have a typically uncommon card, and you will have to build your own kernel with that driver included. Once you have linux installed, building a custom kernel is not difficult at all. You essentially answer yes or no to what you want the kernel to contain, and then tell it to build it. There is a Kernel-HowTo that will help you along.
At this point you should have somehow managed to be booting a kernel with your driver built in, or be loading it as a module. About half of the problems people have are related to not having driver loaded one way or another, so you may find things work now.
If it still doesn't work, then you need to verify that the kernel is indeed detecting the card. To do this, you need to type
dmesg | more
when logged in after the system has booted and all modules have been loaded. This will allow you to review the boot messages that the kernel scrolled up the screen during the boot process. If the card has been detected, you should see somewhere in that list a message from your card's driver that starts with
eth0
, mentions the driver name and the hardware parameters (interrupt setting, input/output port address, etc) that the card is set for. (Note: At boot, linux lists all the PCI cards installed in the system, regardless of what drivers are available - do not mistake this for the driver detection which comes later!)
If you don't see a driver indentification message like this, then the driver didn't detect your card, and that is why things aren't working. See the FAQ ( The FAQ Section ) for what to do if your card is not detected. If you have a NE2000 compatible, there is also some NE2000 specific tips on getting a card detected in the FAQ section as well.
If the card is detected, but the detection message reports some sort of error, like a resource conflict, then the driver probably won't have initialized properly and the card still wont be useable. Most common error messages of this sort are also listed in the FAQ section, along with a solution.
If the detection message seems okay, then double check the card resources reported by the driver against those that the card is physically set for (either by little black jumpers on the card, or by a software utility supplied by the card manufacturer.) These must match exactly. For example, if you have the card jumpered or configured to IRQ 15 and the driver reports IRQ 10 in the boot messages, things will not work. The FAQ section discusses the most common cases of drivers incorrectly detecting the configuration information of various cards.
At this point, you have managed to get you card detected with all the correct parameters, and hopefully everything is working. If not, then you either have a software configuration error, or a hardware configuration error. A software configuration error is not setting up the right network addresses for the
ifconfig
and
route
commands, and details of how to do that are fully described in the Network HowTo and the `Network Administrator's Guide' which both probably came on the CD-ROM you installed from.
A hardware configuration error is when some sort of resource conflict or mis-configuration (that the driver didn't detect at boot) stops the card from working properly. This typically can be observed in several different ways. (1) You get an error message when
ifconfig
tries to open the device for use, such as ``SIOCSFFLAGS: Try again''. (2) The driver reports
eth0
error messages (viewed by
dmesg | more
) or strange inconsistencies for each time it tries to send or receive data. (3) Typing
cat /proc/net/dev
shows non-zero numbers in one of the errs, drop, fifo, frame or carrier columns for
eth0
. (4) Typing
cat /proc/interrupts
shows a zero interrupt count for the card. Most of the typical hardware configuration errors are also discussed in the FAQ section.
Well, if you have got to this point and things still aren't working, read the FAQ section of this document, read the vendor specific section detailing your particular card,
and if it still doesn't work
then you may have to resort to posting to an appropriate newsgroup for help. If you do post, please detail all relevant information in that post, such as the card brand, the kernel version, the driver boot messages, the output from
cat /proc/net/dev
, a clear description of the problem, and of course what you have already tried to do in an effort to get things to work.
You would be surprised at how many people post useless things like ``Can someone help me? My ethernet doesn't work.'' and nothing else. Readers of the newsgroups tend to ignore such silly posts, whereas a detailed and informational problem description may allow a `linux-guru' to spot your problem right away. Of course the same holds true when e-mailing a problem report - always provide as much information as possible.
The twisted pair cables, with the RJ-45 (giant phone jack) connectors is technically called 10BaseT. You may also hear it called UTP (Unsheilded Twisted Pair).
The thinnet, or thin ethernet cabling, (RG-58 coaxial cable) with the BNC (metal push and turn-to-lock) connectors is technically called 10Base2.
The older thick ethernet (10mm coaxial cable) which is only found in older installations is called 10Base5. The 15 pin D-shaped plug found on some ethernet cards (the AUI connector) is used to connect to thick ethernet and external transcievers.
Most ethercards also come in a `Combo' version for only $10-$20 more. These have both twisted pair and thinnet transceiver built-in, allowing you to change your mind later.
Most installations will use 10BaseT/100BaseT 10Base2 does not offer any upgrade path to 100Base-whatever. 10Base2 is fine for hobbyists setting up a home network when purchasing a hub is not desireable for some reason or another.
See Cables, Coax... for other concerns with different types of ethernet cable.
Here are some of the more frequently asked questions about using Linux with an Ethernet connection. Some of the more specific questions are sorted on a `per manufacturer basis'. Chances are the question you want an answer for has already been asked (and answered!) by someone else, so even if you don't find your answer here, you probably can find what you want from a news archive such as Dejanews .
With most Linux distributions, the drivers exist as loadable modules, which are small binary files that are merged with the operating system at run time. A module gives the operating system (kernel) the information on how to control that particular ethernet card. The name of each module is listed in the heading of the section for each card in this document. Once you know the name of the module, you have to add it to the file
/etc/modules.conf
so Linux will know what module to load for your card. The syntax is typically as follows.
alias eth0 module_name
options module_name option1=value1 option2=value2 ...
The options line is typically only needed for older ISA hardware. For multiple card systems, additional lines with
eth1
,
eth2
and so on are usually required.
The module files typically live in the directory
/lib/modules/
which is further subdivided by kernel version (use
uname -r
) and subsystem (in this case
net
). These are put there by the distribution builder, or by the individual user when they run
make modules_install
after building their own kernel and modules (see the kernel howto for more details on building your own stuff).
If you build your own kernel, you have the option of having all the drivers merged with the kernel right then and there, rather than existing as separate files. When this is done, the drivers will detect the hardware at boot up. Options to the drivers are supplied by the kernel command line prior to boot (see BootPrompt Howto for more details). The user chooses what drivers are used during the
make config
step of building the kernel (again see the kernel howto).
The answer to this question depends heavily on exactly what you intend on doing with your net connection, and how much traffic it will see.
If you only expect a single user to be doing the occasional ftp session or WWW connection, then even an old ISA card will probably keep you happy (assuming 10Mbps, not 100).
If you intend to set up a server, and you require the CPU overhead of moving data over the network to be kept to a minimum, you probably want to look at one of the PCI cards that uses a chip with bus-mastering capapbility. In addition, some cards now can actually do some of the processing overhead of data checksums right on the card, giving the CPU even more of a break. For more details please see:
Hardware Checksum/Zerocopy Page
If you fall somewhere in the middle of the above, then any one of the low cost PCI cards with a stable driver will do the job for you.
I heard that there is an updated or preliminary/alpha driver available for my card. Where can I get it?
The newest of the `new' drivers can be found on Donald's WWW site:
www.scyld.com
- things change here quite frequently, so just look around for it. Alternatively, it may be easier to use a WWW browser on:
to locate the driver that you are looking for. (Watch out for WWW browsers that silently munge the source by replacing TABs with spaces and so on - use ftp, or at least an FTP URL for downloading if unsure.)
Now, if it really is an alpha, or pre-alpha driver, then please treat it as such. In other words, don't complain because you can't figure out what to do with it. If you can't figure out how to install it, then you probably shouldn't be testing it. Also, if it brings your machine down, don't complain. Instead, send us a well documented bug report, or even better, a patch!
Note that some of the `useable' experimental/alpha drivers have been included in the standard kernel source tree. When running
make config
one of the first things you will be asked is whether to ``Prompt for development and/or incomplete code/drivers''. You will have to answer `Y' here to get asked about including any alpha/experiemntal drivers.
What needs to be done so that Linux can run two or more ethernet cards?
The answer to this question depends on whether the driver(s) is/are being used as a loadable module or are compiled directly into the kernel. Most linux distributions use modular drivers now. This saves distributing lots of kernels, each with a different driver set built in. Instead a single basic kernel is used and the individual drivers that are need for a particular user's system are loaded once the system has booted far enough to access the driver module files (usually stored in
/lib/modules/
).
In the case of PCI cards, the PCI drivers/modules should detect all of the installed cards that it supports automatically. The user should not supply any I/O base or IRQ information, unless specifically instructed to do so by the individual driver documentation in order to support some non-standard machine.
Some earlier kernels had a limit of 16 ethercards that could be detected at boot, and some ISA modules have a limit of four cards per loaded module. You can always load another copy of the same module under a different name to support another four cards if this is a limitation, or recompile the module with support for as many as you require.
For ISA cards, probing for a card is not a safe operation, and hence you typically need to supply the I/O base address of the card so the module knows where to look. This information is stored in the file
/etc/modules.conf
.
As an example, consider a user that has two ISA NE2000 cards, one at
0x300
and one at
0x240
and what lines they would have in their
/etc/modules.conf
file:
alias eth0 ne
alias eth1 ne
options ne io=0x240,0x300
What this does: This says that if the administrator (or the kernel) does a
modprobe eth0
or a
modprobe eth1
then the
ne.o
driver should be loaded for either
eth0
or
eth1
. Furthermore, when the
ne.o
module is loaded, it should be loaded with the options
io=0x240,0x300
so that the driver knows where to look for the cards. Note that the
0x
is important - things like
300h
as commonly used in the DOS world won't work. Switching the order of the
0x240
and the
0x300
will switch which physical card ends up as
eth0
and
eth1
.
Most of the ISA module drivers can take multiple comma separated I/O values like this example to handle multiple cards. However, some (older?) drivers, such as the 3c501.o module are currently only able to handle one card per module load. In this case you can load the module twice to get both cards detected. The
/etc/modules.conf
file in this case would look like:
alias eth0 3c501
alias eth1 3c501
options eth0 -o 3c501-0 io=0x280 irq=5
options eth1 -o 3c501-1 io=0x300 irq=7
In this example the
-o
option has been used to give each instance of the module a unique name, since you can't have two modules loaded with the same name. The
irq=
option has also been used to to specify the hardware IRQ setting of the card. (This method can also be used with modules that accept comma separated I/O values, but it is less efficient since the module ends up being loaded twice when it doesn't really need to be.)
As a final example, consider a user with one 3c503 card at
0x350
and one SMC Elite16 (wd8013) card at
0x280
. They would have:
alias eth0 wd
alias eth1 3c503
options wd io=0x280
options 3c503 io=0x350
For PCI cards, you typically only need the
alias
lines to correlate the
ethN
interfaces with the appropriate driver name, since the I/O base of a PCI card can be safely detected.
The available modules are typically stored in
/lib/modules/`uname -r`/net
where the
uname -r
command gives the kernel version (e.g. 2.0.34). You can look in there to see which one matches your card. Once you have the correct settings in your
modules.conf
file, you can test things out with:
modprobe eth0
modprobe eth1
...
modprobe ethN-1
where `N' is the number of ethernet interfaces you have. Note that the interface name (
ethX
) assigned to the driver by the kernel is independent of the name used on the alias line. For further details on this, see: Using the Ethernet Drivers as Modules
Since some ISA card probes can hang the machine, kernels up to and including 2.4 only autoprobe for one ISA ethercard by default. As there aren't any distribution kernels with lots of ISA drivers built in anymore, this restriction is no longer in 2.6 and newer.
As of 2.2 and newer kernels, the boot probes have been sorted into safe and unsafe, so that all safe (e.g. PCI and EISA) probes will find all related cards automatically. Systems with more than one ethernet card with at least one of them being an ISA card will still need to do one of the following.)
There are two ways that you can enable auto-probing for the second (and third, and...) card. The easiest method is to pass boot-time arguments to the kernel, which is usually done by LILO. Probing for the second card can be achieved by using a boot-time argument as simple as
ether=0,0,eth1
. In this case
eth0
and
eth1
will be assigned in the order that the cards are found at boot. Say if you want the card at
0x300
to be
eth0
and the card at
0x280
to be
eth1
then you could use
LILO: linux ether=5,0x300,eth0 ether=15,0x280,eth1
The
ether=
command accepts more than the IRQ + I/O + name shown above. Please have a look at Passing Ethernet Arguments...
for the full syntax, card specific parameters, and LILO tips.
The second way (not recommended) is to edit the file
Space.c
and replace the
0xffe0
entry for the I/O address with a zero. The
0xffe0
entry tells it not to probe for that device -- replacing it with a zero will enable autoprobing for that device.
ether=
thing didn't do anything for me. Why?
As described above, the
ether=
command
only
works for drivers that are compiled into the kernel. Now most distributions use the drivers in a modular form, and so the
ether=
command is rarely used anymore. (Some older documentation has yet to be updated to reflect this change.) If you want to apply options for a modular ethernet driver you
must
make changes to the
/etc/modules.conf
file.
If you
are
using a compiled in driver, and have added an
ether=
to your LILO configuration file, note that it won't take effect until you re-run
lilo
to process the updated configuration file.
Problem: PCI NE2000 clone card is not detected at boot with v2.0.x.
Reason:
The
ne.c
driver up to v2.0.30 only knows about the PCI ID number of RealTek 8029 based clone cards. Since then, several others have also released PCI NE2000 clone cards, with different PCI ID numbers, and hence the driver doesn't detect them.
Solution: The easiest solution is to upgrade to a v2.0.31 (or newer) version of the linux kernel. It knows the ID numbers of about five different NE2000-PCI chips, and will detect them automatically at boot or at module loading time. If you upgrade to 2.0.34 (or newer) there is a PCI-only specific NE2000 driver that is slightly smaller and more efficient than the original ISA/PCI driver.
Problem: PCI NE2000 clone card is reported as an ne1000 (8 bit card!) at boot or when I load the ne.o module for v2.0.x, and hence doesn't work.
Reason: Some PCI clones don't implement byte wide access (and hence are not truly 100% NE2000 compatible). This causes the probe to think they are NE1000 cards.
Solution: You need to upgrade to v2.0.31 (or newer) as described above. The driver(s) now check for this hardware bug.
Problem: PCI NE2000 card gets terrible performance, even when reducing the window size as described in the Performance Tips section.
Reason: The spec sheets for the original 8390 chip, desgined and sold over ten years ago, noted that a dummy read from the chip was required before each write operation for maximum reliablity. The driver has the facility to do this but it has been disabled by default since the v1.2 kernel days. One user has reported that re-enabling this `mis-feature' helped their performance with a cheap PCI NE2000 clone card.
Solution:
Since it has only been reported as a solution by one person, don't get your hopes up. Re-enabling the read before write fix is done by simply editing the driver file in
linux/drivers/net/
, uncommenting the line containing
NE_RW_BUGFIX
and then rebuilding the kernel or module as appropriate. Please send an e-mail describing the performance difference and type of card/chip you have if this helps you. (The same can be done for the
ne2k-pci.c
driver as well).
Problem:
The
ne2k-pci.c
driver reports error messages like
timeout waiting for Tx RDC
with a PCI NE2000 card and doesn't work right.
Reason: Your card and/or the card to PCI bus link can't handle the long word I/O optimization used in this driver.
Solution:
Firstly, check the settings available in the BIOS/CMOS setup to see if any related to PCI bus timing are too aggressive for reliable operation. Otherwise using the ISA/PCI
ne.c
driver (or removing the
#define USE_LONGIO
from
ne2k-pci.c
) should let you use the card.
Probem: ISA Plug and Play NE2000 (such as RealTek 8019) is not detected.
Reason: The original NE2000 specification (and hence the linux NE2000 driver in older kernels) did not have support for Plug and Play.
Solution:
Either use a 2.4 or newer kernel that has a NE2000 driver with PnP, or use the DOS configuration disk that came with the card to disable PnP, and to set the card to a specified I/O address and IRQ. Add a line to
/etc/modules.conf
like
options ne io=0xNNN
where
0xNNN
is the hex I/O address you set the card to. (This assumes you are using a modular driver; if not then use an
ether=0,0xNNN,eth0
argument at boot). You may also have to enter the BIOS/CMOS setup and mark the IRQ as Legacy-ISA instead of PnP.
Problem: NE*000 driver reports `not found (no reset ack)' during boot probe.
Reason: This is related to the above change. After the initial verification that an 8390 is at the probed I/O address, the reset is performed. When the card has completed the reset, it is supposed to acknowedge that the reset has completed. Your card doesn't, and so the driver assumes that no NE card is present.
Solution:
You can tell the driver that you have a bad card by using an otherwise unused
mem_end
hexidecimal value of
0xbad
at boot time. You
have
to also supply a non-zero I/O base for the card when using the
0xbad
override. For example, a card that is at
0x340
that doesn't ack the reset would use something like:
LILO: linux ether=0,0x340,0,0xbad,eth0
This will allow the card detection to continue, even if your card doesn't ACK the reset. If you are using the driver as a module, then you can supply the option
bad=0xbad
just like you supply the I/O address.
Problem: NE*000 card hangs machine at first network access.
Reason: This problem has been reported for kernels as old as 1.1.57 to the present. It appears confined to a few software configurable clone cards. It appears that they expect to be initialized in some special way.
Solution: Several people have reported that running the supplied DOS software config program and/or the supplied DOS driver prior to warm booting (i.e. loadlin or the `three-finger-salute') into linux allowed the card to work. This would indicate that these cards need to be initialized in a particular fashion, slightly different than what the present Linux driver does.
Problem:
NE*000 ethercard at
0x360
doesn't get detected.
Reason:
Your NE2000 card is
0x20
wide in I/O space, which makes it hit the parallel port at
0x378
. Other devices that could be there are the second floppy controller (if equipped) at
0x370
and the secondary IDE controller at
0x376--0x377
. If the port(s) are already registered by another driver, the kernel will not let the probe happen.
Solution:
Either move your card to an address like
0x280, 0x340, 0x320
or compile without parallel printer support.
Problem: Network `goes away' every time I print something (NE2000)
Reason: Same problem as above, but you have an older kernel that doesn't check for overlapping I/O regions. Use the same fix as above, and get a new kernel while you are at it.
Problem: NE*000 ethercard probe at 0xNNN: 00 00 C5 ... not found. (invalid signature yy zz)
Reason:
First off, do you have a NE1000 or NE2000 card at the addr. 0xNNN? And if so, does the hardware address reported look like a valid one? If so, then you have a poor NE*000 clone. All NE*000 clones are supposed to have the value
0x57
in bytes 14 and 15 of the SA PROM on the card. Yours doesn't -- it has `yy zz' instead.
Solution:
There are two ways to get around this. The easiest is to use an
0xbad
mem_end value as described above for the `no reset ack' problem. This will bypass the signature check, as long as a non-zero I/O base is also given. This way no recompilation of the kernel is required.
The second method (for hackers) involves changing the driver itself, and then recompiling your kernel (or module). The driver (/usr/src/linux/drivers/net/ne.c) has a "Hall of Shame" list at about line 42. This list is used to detect poor clones. For example, the DFI cards use `DFI' in the first 3 bytes of the PROM, instead of using
0x57
in bytes 14 and 15, like they are supposed to.
Problem: The machine hangs during boot right after the `8390...' or `WD....' message. Removing the NE2000 fixes the problem.
Solution:
Change your NE2000 base address to something like
0x340
. Alternatively, you can use the ``reserve='' boot argument in conjunction with the ``ether='' argument to protect the card from other device driver probes.
Reason: Your NE2000 clone isn't a good enough clone. An active NE2000 is a bottomless pit that will trap any driver autoprobing in its space. Changing the NE2000 to a less-popular address will move it out of the way of other autoprobes, allowing your machine to boot.
Problem: The machine hangs during the SCSI probe at boot.
Reason: It's the same problem as above, change the ethercard's address, or use the reserve/ether boot arguments.
Problem: The machine hangs during the soundcard probe at boot.
Reason: No, that's really during the silent SCSI probe, and it's the same problem as above.
Problem: NE2000 not detected at boot - no boot messages at all
Solution: There is no `magic solution' as there can be a number of reasons why it wasn't detected. The following list should help you walk through the possible problems.
1) Build a new kernel with only the device drivers that you need. Verify that you are indeed booting the fresh kernel. Forgetting to run lilo, etc. can result in booting the old one. (Look closely at the build time/date reported at boot.) Sounds obvious, but we have all done it before. Make sure the driver is in fact included in the new kernel, by checking the
System.map
file for names like
ne_probe
.
2) Look at the boot messages carefully. Does it ever even mention doing a ne2k probe such as `NE*000 probe at 0xNNN: not found (blah blah)' or does it just fail silently. There is a big difference. Use
dmesg|more
to review the boot messages after logging in, or hit Shift-PgUp to scroll the screen up after the boot has completed and the login prompt appears.
3) After booting, do a
cat /proc/ioports
and verify that the full iospace that the card will require is vacant. If you are at
0x300
then the ne2k driver will ask for
0x300-0x31f
. If any other device driver has registered even one port anywhere in that range, the probe will not take place at that address and will silently continue to the next of the probed addresses. A common case is having the lp driver reserve
0x378
or the second IDE channel reserve
0x376
which stops the ne driver from probing
0x360-0x380
.
4) Same as above for
cat /proc/interrupts
. Make sure no other device has registered the interrupt that you set the ethercard for. In this case, the probe will happen, and the ether driver will complain loudly at boot about not being able to get the desired IRQ line.
5) If you are still stumped by the silent failure of the driver, then edit it and add some printk() to the probe. For example, with the ne2k you could add/remove lines (marked with a `+' or `-') in
linux/drivers/net/ne.c
like:
int reg0 = inb_p(ioaddr);
+ printk("NE2k probe - now checking %x\n",ioaddr);
- if (reg0 == 0xFF)
+ if (reg0 == 0xFF) {
+ printk("NE2k probe - got 0xFF (vacant I/O port)\n");
return ENODEV;
+ }
Then it will output messages for each port address that it checks, and you will see if your card's address is being probed or not.
6) You can also get the ne2k diagnostic from Don's ftp site (mentioned in the howto as well) and see if it is able to detect your card after you have booted into linux. Use the `
-p 0xNNN
' option to tell it where to look for the card. (The default is
0x300
and it doesn't go looking elsewhere, unlike the boot-time probe.) The output from when it finds a card will look something like:
Checking the ethercard at 0x300.
Register 0x0d (0x30d) is 00
Passed initial NE2000 probe, value 00.
8390 registers: 0a 00 00 00 63 00 00 00 01 00 30 01 00 00 00 00
SA PROM 0: 00 00 00 00 c0 c0 b0 b0 05 05 65 65 05 05 20 20
SA PROM 0x10: 00 00 07 07 0d 0d 01 01 14 14 02 02 57 57 57 57
NE2000 found at 0x300, using start page 0x40 and end page 0x80.
Your register values and PROM values will probably be different. Note that all the PROM values are doubled for a 16 bit card, and that the ethernet address (00:00:c0:b0:05:65) appears in the first row, and the double
0x57
signature appears at the end of the PROM.
The output from when there is no card installed at
0x300
will look something like this:
Checking the ethercard at 0x300. Register 0x0d (0x30d) is ff Failed initial NE2000 probe, value ff. 8390 registers: ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff SA PROM 0: ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff SA PROM 0x10: ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff ff Invalid signature found, wordlength 2.
The
0xff
values arise because that is the value that is returned when one reads a vacant I/O port. If you happen to have some other hardware in the region that is probed, you may see some non
0xff
values as well.
7) Try warm booting into linux from a DOS boot floppy (via loadlin) after running the supplied DOS driver or config program. It may be doing some extra (i.e. non-standard) "magic" to initialize the card.
8) Try Russ Nelson's ne2000.com packet driver to see if even it can see your card -- if not, then things do not look good. Example:
A:>
ne2000 0x60 10 0x300
The arguments are software interrupt vector, hardware IRQ, and I/O base. You can get it from any msdos archive in pktdrv11.zip -- The current version may be newer than 11.
Problem: You get messages such as the following:
eth0: bogus packet size: 65531, status=0xff, nxpg=0xff
Reason: There is a shared memory problem.
Solution:
The most common reason for this is PCI machines that are not configured to map in ISA memory devices. Hence you end up reading the PC's RAM (all
0xff
values) instead of the RAM on the card that contains the data from the received packet.
Other typical problems that are easy to fix are board conflicts, having cache or `shadow ROM' enabled for that region, or running your ISA bus faster than 8Mhz. There are also a surprising number of memory failures on ethernet cards, so run a diagnostic program if you have one for your ethercard.
Problem: SMC EtherEZ doesn't work in non-shared memory (PIO) mode.
Reason: Older versions of the Ultra driver only supported the card in the shared memory mode of operation.
Solution: The driver in kernel version 2.0 and above also supports the programmed I/O mode of operation. Upgrade to v2.0 or newer.
Problem: Old wd8003 and/or jumper-settable wd8013 always get the IRQ wrong.
Reason: The old wd8003 cards and jumper-settable wd8013 clones don't have the EEPROM that the driver can read the IRQ setting from. If the driver can't read the IRQ, then it tries to auto-IRQ to find out what it is. And if auto-IRQ returns zero, then the driver just assigns IRQ 5 for an 8 bit card or IRQ 10 for a 16 bit card.
Solution: Avoid the auto-IRQ code, and tell the kernel what the IRQ that you have jumpered the card to in your module configuration file (or via a boot time argument for in-kernel drivers).
Problem: SMC Ultra card is detected as wd8013, but the IRQ and shared memory base is wrong.
Reason: The Ultra card looks a lot like a wd8013, and if the Ultra driver is not present in the kernel, the wd driver may mistake the ultra as a wd8013. The ultra probe comes before the wd probe, so this usually shouldn't happen. The ultra stores the IRQ and mem base in the EEPROM differently than a wd8013, hence the bogus values reported.
Solution: Recompile with only the drivers you need in the kernel. If you have a mix of wd and ultra cards in one machine, and are using modules, then load the ultra module first.
Problem: The 3c503 picks IRQ N, but this is needed for some other device which needs IRQ N. (eg. CD ROM driver, modem, etc.) Can this be fixed without compiling this into the kernel?
Solution:
The 3c503 driver probes for a free IRQ line in the order {5, 9/2, 3, 4}, and it should pick a line which isn't being used. The driver chooses when the card is
ifconfig
'ed into operation.
If you are using a modular driver, you can use module parameters to set various things, including the IRQ value.
The following selects IRQ9, base location
0x300
, <ignored value>, and if_port #1 (the external transceiver).
io=0x300 irq=9 xcvr=1
Alternately, if the driver is compiled into the kernel, you can set the same values at boot by passing parameters via LILO.
LILO: linux ether=9,0x300,0,1,eth0
The following selects IRQ3, probes for the base location, <ignored value>, and the default if_port #0 (the internal transceiver)
LILO: linux ether=3,0,0,0,eth0
Problem: 3c503: configured interrupt X invalid, will use autoIRQ.
Reason: The 3c503 card can only use one of IRQ{5, 2/9, 3, 4} (These are the only lines that are connected to the card.) If you pass in an IRQ value that is not in the above set, you will get the above message. Usually, specifying an interrupt value for the 3c503 is not necessary. The 3c503 will autoIRQ when it gets ifconfig'ed, and pick one of IRQ{5, 2/9, 3, 4}.
Solution: Use one of the valid IRQs listed above, or enable autoIRQ by not specifying the IRQ line at all.
Problem: The supplied 3c503 drivers don't use the AUI (thicknet) port. How does one choose it over the default thinnet port?
Solution: The 3c503 AUI port can be selected at boot-time for in-kernel drivers, and at module insertion for modular drivers. The selection is overloaded onto the low bit of the currently-unused dev->rmem_start variable, so a boot-time parameter of:
LILO: linux ether=0,0,0,1,eth0
should work for in-kernel drivers.
To specify the AUI port when loading as a module, just append
xcvr=1
to the module options line along with your I/O and IRQ values.
For best results (and minimum aggravation) it is recommended that you use the (usually DOS) program that came with your card to disable the ISA-PnP mechanism and set it to a fixed I/O address and IRQ. Make sure the I/O address you use is probed by the driver at boot, or if using modules then supply the address as an
io=
option in
/etc/modules.conf
. You may also have to enter the BIOS/CMOS setup and mark the IRQ as Legacy-ISA instead of ISA-PnP (if your computer has this option).
Note that you typically don't need DOS installed to run a DOS based configuration program. You can usually just boot a DOS floppy disk and run them from the supplied floppy disk. You can also download OpenDOS and FreeDOS for free.
If you require ISA-PnP enabled for compatibility with some other operating system then what you will have to do depends on what kernel version you are using. For 2.2.x and older kernels, you will have to use the isapnptools package with linux to configure the card(s) each time at boot. You will still have to make sure the I/O address chosen for the card is probed by the driver or supplied as an
io=
option. For 2.4.x and newer kernels, there is ISA-PnP support available built right into the kernel (if selected at build time) and if your particular driver makes use of this support, then your card will be configured to an available I/O address and IRQ all without any user supplied option values. You do
not
want to be trying to use the user-space isapnptools and the in kernel ISA-PnP support at the same time.
Some systems have an `enable PnP OS' (or similar named) option in the BIOS/CMOS setup menu which does not really have anything to do with ISA-PnP hardware. See below for more details on this option.
Some PCI BIOSes may not enable all PCI cards at power-up, especially if the BIOS option `PnP OS' is enabled. This mis-feature is to support the current release of Windows which still uses some real-mode drivers. Either disable this option, or try and upgrade to a newer driver which has the code to enable a disabled card.
Note that kernel version 2.4.x has better support to deal with this option - in particular you should be able to enable this option, and the kernel/drivers should be able to set up and/or enable the cards on its own.
Version 1 of the PCI spec allowed for some slots to be bus master and some slots to be slave (non-bus master) slots. To avoid the problems associated with people putting BM cards into slave slots, the v2 of the PCI spec said that all slots should be BM capable. Hovever most PCI chipsets only have four BM pins, and so if you have a five slot board, chances are that two slots share one of the BM pins! This allows the board to meet the requirements of the v2 spec (but not the intent). So if you have a bunch of cards, and two of them fail to work, they may be in slots that share a BM pin.
/etc/conf.modules
and not
/etc/modules.conf
.
Older distributions will have
conf.modules
and not
modules.conf
which is the more sensible name of the two. Newer module utility programs expect the new name, so keep that in mind if you upgrade an older system.
The usual reason for this is that people are using a kernel that does not have support for their particular card built in. For a modular kernel, it usually means that the required module has not been requested for loading.
If you are using a modular based kernel, such as those installed by most of the linux distributions, then try and use the configuration utility for the distribution to select the module for your card. For ISA cards, it is a good idea to determine the I/O address of the card and add it as an option (e.g.
io=0x340
) if the configuration utility asks for any options. If there is no configuration utility, then you will have to add the correct module name (and options) to
/etc/modules.conf
-- see
man modprobe
for more details.
The next main cause is having another device using part of the I/O space that your card needs. Most cards are 16 or 32 bytes wide in I/O space. If your card is set at
0x300
and 32 bytes wide, then the driver will ask for
0x300-0x31f
. If any other device driver has registered even one port anywhere in that range, the probe will not take place at that address and the driver will silently continue to the next of the probed addresses. So, after booting, do a
cat /proc/ioports
and verify that the full I/O space that the card will require is vacant.
Another problem is having your card jumpered to an I/O address that isn't probed by default. The list of probed addresses for each driver is easily found just after the text comments in the driver source. Even if the I/O setting of your card is not in the list of probed addresses, you can supply it at boot (for in-kernel drivers) with the
ether=
command as described in Passing Ethernet Arguments...
Modular drivers can make use of the
io=
option in
/etc/modules.conf
to specify an address that isn't probed by default.
unresolved symbol ei_open
and won't load.
You are using one of the many ethernet cards that have an 8390 chip (or clone) on board. For such cards, the driver comes in two parts - the part which you unsuccessfully tried to load (e.g.
ne2k-pci.o, ne.o, wd.o, smc-ultra.o
etc.) and the 8390 part. These drivers have
(+8390)
listed right beside their module name in the vendor specific information listing. ( Vendor Specific...
)
You have to make sure that the
8390.o
module gets loaded
before
loading the second half of the driver so that the second half of the driver can find the functions in
8390.o
that it needs.
Possible causes: (1)Forgetting to run depmod after installing a new kernel and modules, so that module dependencies like this are handled automatically. (2)Using
insmod
instead of
modprobe
, as insmod doesn't check for any module ordering constraints. (3)The module
8390.o
is not in the directory beside the other half of the driver where it should be.
ifconfig
reports the wrong I/O address for the card.
No it doesn't. You are just interpreting it incorrectly. This is
not
a bug, and the numbers reported are correct. It just happens that some 8390 based cards (wd80x3, smc-ultra, etc) have the actual 8390 chip living at an offset from the first assigned I/O port. This is the value stored in
dev->
base_addr
, and is what
ifconfig
reports. If you want to see the full range of ports that your card uses, then try
cat /proc/ioports
which will give the numbers you expect.
0xffff
)
This will usually show up as reads of lots of
0xffff
values. No shared memory cards of any type will work in a PCI machine unless you have the PCI ROM BIOS/CMOS SETUP configuration set properly. You have to set it to allow shared memory access from the ISA bus for the memory region that your card is trying to use. If you can't figure out which settings are applicable then ask your supplier or local computer guru. For AMI BIOS, there is usually a "Plug and Play" section where there will be an ``ISA Shared Memory Size'' and ``ISA Shared Memory Base'' settings. For cards like the wd8013 and SMC Ultra, change the size from the default of `Disabled' to 16kB, and change the base to the shared memory address of your card.
Do a
cat /proc/interrupts
. A running total of the number of interrupt events your card generates will be in the list given from the above. If it is zero and/or doesn't increase when you try to use the card then there is probably a physical interrupt conflict with another device installed in the computer (regardless of whether or not the other device has a driver installed/available). Change the IRQ of one of the two devices to a free IRQ.
Werner Almesberger has been working on ATM support for linux. He has been working with the Efficient Networks ENI155p board ( Efficient Networks ) and the Zeitnet ZN1221 board ( Zeitnet ).
Werner says that the driver for the ENI155p is rather stable, while the driver for the ZN1221 is presently unfinished.
Check the latest/updated status at the following URL:
Is there any gigabit ethernet support for Linux?
Yes, there are currently several. One of the prominent Linux network developers rated the performance of the cards with linux drivers as follows: 1) Intel E1000, 2) Tigon2/Acenic, 3) SysKonnect sk-98xx, 4) Tigon3/bcm57xx. This was as of March 2002 and subject to change of course.
Is there FDDI support for Linux?
Yes. Larry Stefani has written a driver for v2.0 with Digital's DEFEA (FDDI EISA) and DEFPA (FDDI PCI) cards. This was included into the v2.0.24 kernel. Currently no other cards are supported though.
Will Full Duplex give me 20MBps? Does Linux support it?
Cameron Spitzer writes the following about full duplex 10Base-T cards: ``If you connect it to a full duplex switched hub, and your system is fast enough and not doing much else, it can keep the link busy in both directions. There is no such thing as full duplex 10BASE-2 or 10BASE-5 (thin and thick coax). Full Duplex works by disabling collision detection in the adapter. That's why you can't do it with coax; the LAN won't run that way. 10BASE-T (RJ45 interface) uses separate wires for send and receive, so it's possible to run both ways at the same time. The switching hub takes care of the collision problem. The signalling rate is 10 Mbps.''
So as you can see, you still will only be able to receive or transmit at 10Mbps, and hence don't expect a 2x performance increase. As to whether it is supported or not, that depends on the card and possibly the driver. Some cards may do auto-negotiation, some may need driver support, and some may need the user to select an option in a card's EEPROM configuration. Only the serious/heavy user would notice the difference between the two modes anyway.
If you spent the extra money on a multi processor (MP) computer then buy a good ethernet card as well. For v2.0 kernels it wasn't really an issue, but it definitely is for v2.2. Most of the older non-intelligent (e.g. ISA bus PIO and shared memory design) cards were never designed with any consideration for use on a MP machine. The executive summary is to buy an intelligent modern design card and make sure the driver has been written (or updated) to handle MP operation. (The key words here are `modern design' - the PCI-NE2000's are just a 10+ year old design on a modern bus.) Looking for the text
spin_lock
in the driver source is a good indication that the driver has been written to deal with MP operation. The full details of why you should buy a good card for MP use (and what happens if you dont) follow.
In v2.0 kernels, only one processor was allowed `in kernel' (i.e. changing kernel data and/or running device drivers) at any given time. So from the point of view of the card (and the associated driver) nothing was different from uni processor (UP) operation and things just continued to work. (This was the easiest way to get a working MP version of Linux - one big lock around the whole kernel only allows one processor in at a time. This way you know that you won't have two processors trying to change the same thing at the same time!)
The downside to only allowing one processor in the kernel at a time was that you only got MP performance if the running programs were self contained and calculation intensive. If the programs did a lot of input/output (I/O) such as reading or writing data to disk or over a network, then all but one of the processors would be stalled waiting on their I/O requests to be completed while the one processor running in kernel frantically tries to run all the device drivers to fill the I/O requests. The kernel becomes the bottleneck and since there is only one processor running in the kernel, the performance of a MP machine in the heavy I/O, single-lock case quickly degrades close to that of a single processor machine.
Since this is clearly less than ideal (esp. for file/WWW servers, routers, etc.) the v2.2 kernels have finer grained locking - meaning that more than one processor can be in the kernel at a time. Instead of one big lock around the whole kernel, there are a lot of smaller locks protecting critical data from being manipulated by more than one processor at a time - e.g. one processor can be running the driver for the network card, while another processor is running the driver for the disk drive at the same time.
Okay, with that all in mind here are the snags: The finer locking means that you can have one processor trying to send data out through an ethernet driver while another processor tries to access the same driver/card to do something else (such as get the card statistics for
cat /proc/net/dev
). Oops - your card stats just got sent out over the wire, while you got data for your stats instead. Yes, the card got confused by being asked to do two (or more!) things at once, and chances are it crashed your machine in the process.
So, the driver that worked for UP is no longer good enough - it needs to be updated with locks that control access to the underlying card so that the three tasks of receive, transmit and manipulation of configuration data are serialized to the degree required by the card for stable operation. The scary part here is that a driver not yet updated with locks for stable MP operation will probably appear to be working in a MP machine under light network load, but will crash the machine or at least exhibit strange behaviour when two (or more!) processors try to do more than one of these three tasks at the same time.
The updated MP aware ethernet driver will (at a minimum) require a lock around the driver that limits access at the entry points from the kernel into the driver to `one at a time please'. With this in place, things will be serialized so that the underlying hardware should be treated just as if it was being used in a UP machine, and so it should be stable. The downside is that the one lock around the whole ethernet driver has the same negative performance implications that having one big lock around the whole kernel had (but on a smaller scale) - i.e. you can only have one processor dealing with the card at a time. [Technical Note: The performance impact may also include increased interrupt latencies if the locks that need to be added are of the
irqsave
type and they are held for a long time.]
Possible improvements on this situation can be made in two ways. You can try to minimize the time between when the lock is taken and when it is released, and/or you can implement finer grained locking within the driver (e.g. a lock around the whole driver would be overkill if a lock or two protecting against simultaneous access to a couple of sensitive registers/settings on the card would suffice).
However, for older non-intelligent cards that were never designed with MP use in mind, neither of these improvements may be feasible. Worse yet is that the non-intelligent cards typically require the processor to move the data between the card and the computer memory, so in a worst case scenario the lock will be held the whole time that it takes to move each 1.5kB data packet over an ISA bus.
The more modern intelligent cards typically move network data directly to and from the computer memory without any help from a processor. This is a big win, since the lock is then only held for the short time it takes the processor to tell the card where in memory to get/store the next network data packet. More modern card designs are less apt to require a single big lock around the whole driver as well.
As of v2.0, only the 3c509, depca, de4x5, pcnet32, and all the 8390 drivers (wd, smc-ultra, ne, 3c503, etc.) have been made `architecture independent' so as to work on the DEC Alpha CPU based systems. Other updated PCI drivers from Donald's WWW page may also work as these have been written with architecture independence in mind.
Note that the changes that are required to make a driver architecture independent aren't that complicated. You only need to do the following:
-multiply all
jiffies
related values by HZ/100 to account for the different HZ value that the Alpha uses. (i.e
timeout=2;
becomes
timeout=2*HZ/100;
)
-replace any I/O memory (640k to 1MB) pointer dereferences with the appropriate readb() writeb() readl() writel() calls, as shown in this example.
- int *mem_base = (int *)dev-> mem_start; - mem_base[0] = 0xba5eba5e; + unsigned long mem_base = dev-> mem_start; + writel(0xba5eba5e, mem_base);
-replace all memcpy() calls that have I/O memory as source or target destinations with the appropriate one of
memcpy_fromio()
or
memcpy_toio()
.
Details on handling memory accesses in an architecture independent fashion are documented in the file
linux/Documentation/IO-mapping.txt
that comes with recent kernels.
For the most up to date information on Sparc stuff, try the following URL:
Note that some Sparc ethernet hardware gets its MAC address from the host computer, and hence you can end up with multiple interfaces all with the same MAC address. If you need to put more than one interface on the same net then use the
hw
option to
ifconfig
to assign unique MAC address.
Issues regarding porting PCI drivers to the Sparc platform are similar to those mentioned above for the AXP platform. In addition there may be some endian issues, as the Sparc is big endian, and the AXP and ix86 are little endian.
There are several other hardware platforms that Linux can run on, such as Atari/Amiga (m68k). As in the Sparc case it is best to check with the home site of each Linux port to that platform to see what is currently supported. (Links to such sites are welcome here - send them in!)
Can I link 10/100BaseT (RJ45) based systems together without a hub?
You can link 2 machines, but no more than that, without extra devices/gizmos, by using a crossover cable. Some newer fancy autonegotiaton cards may not work on a crossover cable though. And no, you can't hack together a hub just by crossing a few wires and stuff. It's pretty much impossible to do the collision signal right without duplicating a hub.
I get a bunch of `SIOCSIFxxx: No such device' messages at boot, followed by a `SIOCADDRT: Network is unreachable' What is wrong?
Your ethernet device was not detected at boot/module insertion time, and when
ifconfig
and
route
are run, they have no device to work with. Use
dmesg | more
to review the boot messages and see if there are any messages about detecting an ethernet card.
I get `SIOCSFFLAGS: Try again' when I run `ifconfig' -- Huh?
Some other device has taken the IRQ that your ethercard is trying to use, and so the ethercard can't use the IRQ. You don't necessairly need to reboot to resolve this, as some devices only grab the IRQs when they need them and then release them when they are done. Examples are some sound cards, serial ports, floppy disk driver, etc. You can type
cat /proc/interrupts
to see which interrupts are presently
in use
. Most of the Linux ethercard drivers only grab the IRQ when they are opened for use via `ifconfig'. If you can get the other device to `let go' of the required IRQ line, then you should be able to `Try again' with ifconfig.
When I run ifconfig with no arguments, it reports that LINK is UNSPEC (instead of 10Mbs Ethernet) and it also says that my hardware address is all zeros.
This is because people are running a newer version of the `ifconfig' program than their kernel version. This new version of ifconfig is not able to report these properties when used in conjunction with an older kernel. You can either upgrade your kernel, `downgrade' ifconfig, or simply ignore it. The kernel knows your hardware address, so it really doesn't matter if ifconfig can't read it.
You may also get strange information if the
ifconfig
program you are using is a lot older than the kernel you are using.
When I run ifconfig with no arguments, it reports that I have a huge error count in both rec'd and transmitted packets. It all seems to work ok -- What is wrong?
Look again. It says
RX packets
big number
PAUSE
errors 0
PAUSE
dropped 0
PAUSE
overrun 0
. And the same for the
TX
column. Hence the big numbers you are seeing are the total number of packets that your machine has rec'd and transmitted. If you still find it confusing, try typing
cat /proc/net/dev
instead.
/dev/
for EthercardsI have /dev/eth0 as a link to /dev/xxx. Is this right?
Contrary to what you have heard, the files in /dev/* are not used. You can delete any
/dev/wd0, /dev/ne0
and similar entries.
How do I get access to the raw ethernet device in linux, without going through TCP/IP and friends?
int s=socket(AF_INET,SOCK_PACKET,htons(ETH_P_ALL));
This gives you a socket receiving every protocol type. Do
recvfrom()
calls to it and it will fill the sockaddr with device type in sa_family and the device name in the sa_data array. I don't know who originally invented SOCK_PACKET for Linux (its been in for ages) but its superb stuff. You can use it to send stuff raw too via
sendto()
calls. You have to have root access to do either of course.
Here are some tips that you can use if you are suffering from low ethernet throughput, or to gain a bit more speed on those ftp transfers.
The
ttcp.c
program is a good test for measuring raw throughput speed. Another common trick is to do a
ftp>
get large_file /dev/null
where
large_file
is > 1MB and residing in the buffer cache on the Tx'ing machine. (Do the `get' at least twice, as the first time will be priming the buffer cache on the Tx'ing machine.) You want the file in the buffer cache because you are not interested in combining the file access speed from the disk into your measurement. Which is also why you send the incoming data to
/dev/null
instead of onto the disk.
Even an 8 bit card is able to receive back-to-back packets without any problems. The difficulty arises when the computer doesn't get the Rx'd packets off the card quick enough to make room for more incoming packets. If the computer does not quickly clear the card's memory of the packets already received, the card will have no place to put the new packet.
In this case the card either drops the new packet, or writes over top of a previously received packet. Either one seriously interrupts the smooth flow of traffic by causing/requesting re-transmissions and can seriously degrade performance by up to a factor of 5!
Cards with more onboard memory are able to ``buffer'' more packets, and thus can handle larger bursts of back-to-back packets without dropping packets. This in turn means that the card does not require as low a latency from the the host computer with respect to pulling the packets out of the buffer to avoid dropping packets.
Most 8 bit cards have an 8kB buffer, and most 16 bit cards have a 16kB buffer. Most Linux drivers will reserve 3kB of that buffer (for two Tx buffers), leaving only 5kB of receive space for an 8 bit card. This is room enough for only three full sized (1500 bytes) ethernet packets.
As mentioned above, if the packets are removed from the card fast enough, then a drop/overrun condition won't occur even when the amount of Rx packet buffer memory is small. The factor that sets the rate at which packets are removed from the card to the computer's memory is the speed of the data path that joins the two -- that being the ISA bus speed. (If the CPU is a dog-slow 386sx-16, then this will also play a role.)
The recommended ISA bus clock is about 8MHz, but many motherboards and peripheral devices can be run at higher frequencies. The clock frequency for the ISA bus can usually be set in the CMOS setup, by selecting a divisor of the mainboard/CPU clock frequency. Some ISA and PCI/ISA mainboards may not have this option, and so you are stuck with the factory default.
For example, here are some receive speeds as measured by the TTCP program on a 40MHz 486, with an 8 bit WD8003EP card, for different ISA bus speeds.
ISA Bus Speed (MHz) Rx TTCP (kB/s)
------------------- --------------
6.7 740
13.4 970
20.0 1030
26.7 1075
You would be hard pressed to do better than 1075kB/s with any 10Mb/s ethernet card, using TCP/IP. However, don't expect every system to work at fast ISA bus speeds. Most systems will not function properly at speeds above 13MHz. (Also, some PCI systems have the ISA bus speed fixed at 8MHz, so that the end user does not have the option of increasing it.)
In addition to faster transfer speeds, one will usually also benefit from a reduction in CPU usage due to the shorter duration memory and I/O cycles. (Note that hard disks and video cards located on the ISA bus will also usually experience a performance increase from an increased ISA bus speed.)
Be sure to back up your data prior to experimenting with ISA bus speeds in excess of 8MHz, and thouroughly test that all ISA peripherals are operating properly after making any speed increases.
Once again, cards with small amounts of onboard RAM and relatively slow data paths between the card and the computer's memory run into trouble. The default TCP Rx window setting is 32kB, which means that a fast computer on the same subnet as you can dump 32k of data on you without stopping to see if you received any of it okay.
Recent versions of the
route
command have the ability to set the size of this window on the fly. Usually it is only for the local net that this window must be reduced, as computers that are behind a couple of routers or gateways are `buffered' enough to not pose a problem. An example usage would be:
route add <whatever>
... window <win_size>
where
win_size
is the size of the window you wish to use (in bytes). An 8 bit 3c503 card on an ISA bus operating at a speed of 8MHz or less would work well with a window size of about 4kB. Too large a window will cause overruns and dropped packets, and a drastic reduction in ethernet throughput. You can check the operating status by doing a
cat /proc/net/dev
which will display any dropped or overrun conditions that occurred.
Some people have found that using 8 bit cards in NFS clients causes poorer than expected performance, when using 8kB (native Sun) NFS packet size.
The possible reason for this could be due to the difference in on board buffer size between the 8 bit and the 16 bit cards. The maximum ethernet packet size is about 1500 bytes. Now that 8kB NFS packet will arrive as about 6 back to back maximum size ethernet packets. Both the 8 and 16 bit cards have no problem Rx'ing back to back packets. The problem arises when the machine doesn't remove the packets from the cards buffer in time, and the buffer overflows. The fact that 8 bit cards take an extra ISA bus cycle per transfer doesn't help either. What you can do if you have an 8 bit card is either set the NFS transfer size to 2kB (or even 1kB), or try increasing the ISA bus speed in order to get the card's buffer cleared out faster. I have found that an old WD8003E card at 8MHz (with no other system load) can keep up with a large receive at 2kB NFS size, but not at 4kB, where performance was degraded by a factor of three.
On the other hand, if the default mount option is to use 1kB size and you have at least a 16 bit ISA card, you may find a significant increase in going to 4kB (or even 8kB).
The following lists many cards in alphabetical order by vendor name and then product identifier. Beside each product ID, you will see either `Supported', `Semi-Supported', `Obsolete', `Dropped' or `Not Supported'.
Supported means that a driver for that card exists, and many people are happily using it and it seems quite reliable.
Semi-Supported means that a driver exists, but at least one of the following descriptions is true: (1) The driver and/or hardware are buggy, which may cause poor performance, failing connections or even crashes. (2) The driver is new or the card is fairly uncommon, and hence the driver has seen very little use/testing and the driver author has had very little feedback. Obviously (2) is preferable to (1), and the individual description of the card/driver should make it clear which one holds true. In either case, you will probably have to answer `Y' when asked ``Prompt for development and/or incomplete code/drivers?'' when running
make config
.
Obsolete means that a driver exists, and was probably at one time considered Semi-Supported. However, due to lack of interest, users, and support, it is known to not work anymore. The driver is still in the kernel, but disabled in the configuration option menu. The general plan is that if it does not get updated by the next kernel development cycle, it will be dropped entirely. Usually a driver marked obsolete simply needs an update to match changes in the kernel to driver interface, or other similar kernel API changes.
Dropped means that the driver was once obsolete (see above) and since there was not enough interest in fixing it, it has been removed from the current kernel tree. There is nothing stopping anyone from copying the driver from an older kernel, making the required updates and using it.
Not Supported means there is not a driver currently available for that card. This could be due to a lack of interest in hardware that is rare/uncommon, or because the vendors won't release the hardware documentation required to write a driver.
Note that the difference between `Supported' and `Semi-Supported' is rather subjective, and is based on user feedback. So be warned that you may find a card listed as semi-supported works perfectly for you (which is great), or that a card listed as supported gives you no end of troubles and problems (which is not so great).
After the status, the name of the driver given in the linux kernel is listed. This will also be the name of the driver module that would be used in the
alias eth0 driver_name
line that is found in the
/etc/modules.conf
module configuration file.
If you are not sure what your card is, but you think it is a 3Com card, you can probably figure it out from the assembly number. 3Com has a document `Identifying 3Com Adapters By Assembly Number' (ref 24500002) that would most likely clear things up. Also check out their WWW/FTP site with various goodies:
www.3Com.com
that you may find useful (including PDFs with technical info for their cards).
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: 3c501
This obsolete stone-age 8 bit card is really too brain-damaged to use. Avoid it like the plague. Do not purchase this card, even as a joke. It's performance is horrible, and it breaks in many ways.
For those not yet convinced, the 3c501 can only do one thing at a time -- while you are removing one packet from the single-packet buffer it cannot receive another packet, nor can it receive a packet while loading a transmit packet. This was fine for a network between two 8088-based computers where processing each packet and replying took 10's of msecs, but modern networks send back-to-back packets for almost every transaction.
AutoIRQ works, DMA isn't used, the autoprobe only looks at
0x280
and
0x300
, and the debug level is set with the third boot-time argument.
Once again, the use of a 3c501 is strongly discouraged ! Even more so with a IP multicast kernel, as you will grind to a halt while listening to all multicast packets. See the comments at the top of the source code for more details.
Status: Supported, Driver Name: 3c503 (+8390)
The 3c503 does not have ``EEPROM setup'', so a diagnostic/setup program isn't needed before running the card with Linux. The shared memory address of the 3c503 is set using jumpers that are shared with the boot PROM address. This is confusing to people familiar with other ISA cards, where you always leave the jumper set to ``disable'' unless you have a boot PROM.
These cards should be about the same speed as the same bus width WD80x3, but turn out to be actually a bit slower. These shared-memory ethercards also have a programmed I/O mode that doesn't use the 8390 facilities (their engineers found too many bugs!) The Linux 3c503 driver can also work with the 3c503 in programmed-I/O mode, but this is slower and less reliable than shared memory mode. Also, programmed-I/O mode is not as well tested when updating the drivers. You shouldn't use the programmed-I/O mode unless you need it for compatibility with another operating system that is used on the same computer.
The 3c503's IRQ line is set in software, with no hints from an EEPROM. Unlike the MS-DOS drivers, the Linux driver has capability to autoIRQ: it uses the first available IRQ line in {5,2/9,3,4}, selected each time the card is ifconfig'ed. Note that `ifconfig' will return EAGAIN if no IRQ line is available at that time.
Some common problems that people have with the 503 are discussed in Problems with... .
If you intend on using this driver as a loadable module you should probably see Using the Ethernet Drivers as Modules for module specific information.
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: 3c505
These cards use the i82586 chip but are not that many of them about. It is included in the standard kernel, but it is classed as an alpha driver. See Alpha Drivers for important information on using alpha-test ethernet drivers with Linux.
There is also the file
/usr/src/linux/drivers/net/README.3c505
that you should read if you are going to use one of these cards. It contains various options that you can enable/disable.
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: 3c507
This card uses one of the Intel chips, and the development of the driver is closely related to the development of the Intel Ether Express driver. The driver is included in the standard kernel release, but as an alpha driver. See Alpha Drivers for important information on using alpha-test ethernet drivers with Linux.
Status: Supported, Driver Name: 3c509
This card was fairly inexpensive and had good performance for an ISA non-bus-master design. The drawbacks were that the original 3c509 required very low interrupt latency. The 3c509B shouldn't suffer from the same problem, due to having a larger buffer. (See below.) These cards use PIO transfers, similar to a ne2000 card, and so a shared memory card such as a wd8013 will be more efficient in comparison.
The original 3c509 had a small packet buffer (4kB total, 2kB Rx, 2kB Tx), causing the driver to occasionally drop a packet if interrupts were masked for too long. To minimize this problem, you can try unmasking interrupts during IDE disk transfers (see
man hdparm
) and/or increasing your ISA bus speed so IDE transfers finish sooner.
The newer model 3c509B has 8kB on board, and the buffer can be split 4/4, 5/3 or 6/2 for Rx/Tx. This setting is changed with the DOS configuration utility, and is stored on the EEPROM. This should alleviate the above problem with the original 3c509.
3c509B users should use either the supplied DOS utility to disable the plug and play support, and to set the output media to what they require. The linux driver currently does not support the Autodetect media setting, so you have to select 10Base-T or 10Base-2 or AUI. Note that if you turn off PnP entirely, you should exit the utility and and then follow that with a hard reset to ensure that the new settings take effect.
Some people ask about the ``Server or Workstation'' and ``Highest Modem Speed'' settings presented in the DOS configuration utility. These settings don't actually change any hardware settings, rather they are only tuning hints to the DOS driver. The linux driver does not need or use these hints. Also, DON'T enable EISA mode on this ISA card unless you really have an EISA machine, or you may end up needing to find an EISA machine just to get your ISA card back into ISA mode!
The card with the lowest hardware ethernet address will
always
end up being
eth0
in a multiple ISA 3c509 configuration. This shouldn't matter to anyone, except for those people who want to assign a 6 byte hardware address to a particular interface. If this really bothers you, have a look at Donald's latest driver, as you may be able to use a
0x3c509
value in the unused mem address fields to order the detection to suit your needs.
Status: Supported, Driver Name: 3c515
This is 3Com's ISA 100Mbps offering, codenamed ``CorkScrew''. Note that you will never achieve full 100Mbps on an ISA bus.
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: 3c523
This MCA bus card uses the i82586, and Chris Beauregard has modified the ni52 driver to work with these cards.
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: 3c527
Yes, another i82586 MCA card. No, not too much interest in it. Better chances with the 3c529 if you are stuck with MCA, since it uses the tried and true 3c509 core.
Status: Supported, Driver Name: 3c509
This card actually uses the same chipset as the 3c509. People have actually been using this card in MCA machines.
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: tmspci
Token ring driver updates can be found at:
http://www.linuxtr.net/download.html
Status: Supported, Driver Name: 3c59x
A mini PCI NIC found on various IBM and HP notebooks. Also knownas a `laptop tornado'.
Status: Supported, Driver Name: 3c589_cs
This PCMCIA card is the combination of a 3c589B ethernet card with a modem. The modem appears as a standard modem to the end user. The only difficulty is getting the two separate linux drivers to share one interrupt. There are a couple of new registers and some hardware interrupt sharing support. Thanks again to Cameron for getting a sample unit and documentation sent off to David Hinds.
Status: Supported, Driver Name: 3c59x
Note that to support this Cardbus device in old 2.2 kernels, you had to use 3c575_cb.c from the pcmcia_cs package.
Status: Supported, Driver Name: 3c509
The EISA version of the 509. The current EISA version uses the same 16 bit wide chip rather than a 32 bit interface, so the performance increase isn't stunning. Make sure the card is configured for EISA addressing mode. Read the above 3c509 section for info on the driver.
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: 3c589_cs
Many people have been using this PCMCIA card for quite some time now. The "B" in the name means the same here as it does for the 3c509 case.
Status: Supported, Driver Name: 3c59x
These ``Vortex'' cards are for PCI bus machines, with the '590 being 10Mbps and the '595 being 3Com's 100Mbs offering. Also note that you can run the '595 as a '590 (i.e. in a 10Mbps mode). The 3c59x line was replaced by the 3c9xx line quite some time ago, and so these cards are considered rather old.
Note that there are two different 3c590 cards out there, early models that had 32kB of on-board memory, and later models that only have 8kB of memory. The 3c595 cards have 64kB, as you can't get away with only 8kB RAM at 100Mbps!
Status: Supported, Driver Name: 3c59x
These are the EISA versions of the 3c59x series of cards. The 3c592/3c597 (aka Demon) should work with the vortex driver discussed above.
Status: Supported, Driver Name: 3c59x
These cards (aka `Boomerang', aka EtherLink III XL) have been released to take over the place of the 3c590/3c595 cards, with some additional support added to the vortex/3c59x driver. The driver found in older kernels may not support the latest revision(s) of these cards, so you may need a driver update.
Note that the 3c905C has support for TCP/UDP/IP checksumming in hardware support - meaning less work for the computer CPU to do!
Status: Supported, Driver Name: acenic
This driver supports several other Gigabit cards in addition to the 3Com model.
Status: Supported, Driver Name: tg3, bcm5700(old)
This driver supports several other Gigabit cards in addition to the 3Com model. The
tg3
driver is a complete rewrite by several linux developers in an effort to improve on the vendor supplied
bcm5700
driver.
Status: Supported, Driver Name: ne (+8390)
Don't let the name fool you. This is still supposed to be a NE2000 compatible card, and should work with the ne2000 driver.
Status: Supported, Driver Name: de4x5, tulip, OR 8139too
Apparently there have been several revisions of the EN1207 (A through D) with A, B, and C being tulip based and the D revision being RealTek 8139 based (different driver). So as with all purchases, you should try and make sure you can return it if it doesn't work for you.
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: ?
A driver for these parallel port adapters was available around the time of the 2.0 or 2.1 kernel. It's last known location was:
http://www.unix-ag.uni-siegen.de/~nils/accton_linux.html
Status: Supported, Driver Name: pcnet_cs
Note that some of the older Adaptec 32 bit boards used a tulip clone.
Status: Supported, Driver Name: starfire
Status: Supported, Driver Name: lance
These are a series of low-cost ethercards using the 79C960 version of the AMD LANCE. These are bus-master cards, and hence one of the faster ISA bus ethercards available.
DMA selection and chip numbering information can be found in AMD LANCE .
Status: Supported, Driver Name: at1700
Note that to access this driver during
make config
you still have to answer `Y' when asked ``Prompt for development and/or incomplete code/drivers?'' at the first. This is simply due to lack of feedback on the driver stability due to it being a relatively rare card. If you have problems with the driver that ships with the kernel then you may be interested in the alternative driver available at:
http://www.cc.hit-u.ac.jp/nagoya/at1700/
The Allied Telesis AT1700 series ethercards are based on the Fujitsu MB86965. This chip uses a programmed I/O interface, and a pair of fixed-size transmit buffers. This allows small groups of packets to be sent back-to-back, with a short pause while switching buffers.
The Fujitsu chip used on the AT1700 has a design flaw: it can only be fully reset by doing a power cycle of the machine. Pressing the reset button doesn't reset the bus interface. This wouldn't be so bad, except that it can only be reliably detected when it has been freshly reset. The solution/work-around is to power-cycle the machine if the kernel has a problem detecting the AT1700.
Status: Supported, Driver Name: ne, ne2k-pci (+8390)
Yet another PCI NE2000 clone card. This one is based on the RealTek 8029 chip.
Status: Supported, Driver Name: pcnet32
This is the PCI version of the AT1500, and it doesn't suffer from the problems that the Boca 79c970 PCI card does. DMA selection and chip numbering information can be found in AMD LANCE .
Status: Supported, Driver Name: 8139too, rtl8139(old)
This card uses the RealTek 8139 chip - see the section RealTek 8139 .
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: eepro100
This card uses the i82557 chip, and hence may/should work with the eepro100 driver. If you try this please send in a report so this information can be updated.
Carl Ching of AMD was kind enough to provide a very detailed description of all the relevant AMD ethernet products which helped clear up this section.
Status: Supported, Driver Name: lance
There really is no AMD ethernet card. You are probably reading this because the only markings you could find on your card said AMD and the above number. The 7990 is the original `LANCE' chip, but most stuff (including this document) refer to all these similar chips as `LANCE' chips. (...incorrectly, I might add.)
These above numbers refer to chips from AMD that are the heart of many ethernet cards. For example, the Allied Telesis AT1500 (see AT1500 ) and the NE1500/2100 (see NE1500 ) use these chips.
The 7990/79c90 have long been replaced by newer versions. The 79C960 (a.k.a. PCnet-ISA) essentially contains the 79c90 core, along with all the other hardware support required, which allows a single-chip ethernet solution. The 79c961 (PCnet-ISA+) is a jumperless Plug and Play version of the '960. The final chip in the ISA series is the 79c961A (PCnet-ISA II), which adds full duplex capabilities. All cards with one of these chips should work with the lance.c driver, with the exception of very old cards that used the original 7990 in a shared memory configuration. These old cards can be spotted by the lack of jumpers for a DMA channel.
One common problem people have is the `busmaster arbitration failure' message. This is printed out when the LANCE driver can't get access to the bus after a reasonable amount of time has elapsed (50us). This usually indicates that the motherboard implementation of bus-mastering DMA is broken, or some other device is hogging the bus, or there is a DMA channel conflict. If your BIOS setup has the `GAT option' (for Guaranteed Access Time) then try toggling/altering that setting to see if it helps.
Also note that the driver only looks at the addresses:
0x300, 0x320, 0x340, 0x360
for a valid card, and any address supplied by an
ether=
boot argument is silently ignored (this will be fixed) so make sure your card is configured for one of the above I/O addresses for now.
The driver will still work fine, even if more than 16MB of memory is installed, since low-memory `bounce-buffers' are used when needed (i.e. any data from above 16MB is copied into a buffer below 16MB before being given to the card to transmit.)
The DMA channel can be set with the low bits of the otherwise-unused dev-> mem_start value (a.k.a. PARAM_1). (see PARAM_1 ) If unset it is probed for by enabling each free DMA channel in turn and checking if initialization succeeds.
The HP-J2405A board is an exception: with this board it's easy to read the EEPROM-set values for the IRQ, and DMA.
Status: Supported, Driver Name: sis900
The
sis900.txt
file in 2.4 kernels states that "AM79C901 HomePNA PHY is not thoroughly tested, there may be some bugs in the "on the fly" change of transceiver." so you may want to check that if using a newer kernel.
Status: Supported, Driver Name: pcnet32
This is the PCnet-32 -- a 32 bit bus-master version of the original LANCE chip for VL-bus and local bus systems. chip. While these chips can be operated with the standard
lance.c
driver, a 32 bit version (
pcnet32.c
) is also available that does not have to concern itself with any 16MB limitations associated with the ISA bus.
Status: Supported, Driver Name: pcnet32
This is the PCnet-PCI -- similar to the PCnet-32, but designed for PCI bus based systems. Please see the above PCnet-32 information. This means that you need to build a kernel with PCI BIOS support enabled. The '970A adds full duplex support along with some other features to the original '970 design.
Note that the Boca implementation of the 79C970 fails on fast Pentium machines. This is a hardware problem, as it affects DOS users as well. See the Boca section for more details.
Status: Supported, Driver Name: pcnet32
This is AMD's 100Mbit chip for PCI systems, which also supports full duplex operation. It was introduced in June 1996.
Status: Supported, Driver Name: pcnet32
This has been confirmed to work just like the '971.
Status: Supported, Driver Name: pcnet32
This is the PCnet-SCSI -- which is basically treated like a '970 from an Ethernet point of view. Also see the above information. Don't ask how well the SCSI half of the chip is supported -- this is the Ethernet-HowTo , not the SCSI-HowTo.
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: ac3200
This EISA bus card is based on the common 8390 chip used in the ne2000 and wd80x3 cards. Note that to access this driver during
make config
you still have to answer `Y' when asked ``Prompt for development and/or incomplete code/drivers?'' at the first. This is simply due to lack of feedback on the driver stability due to it being a relatively rare card. Feedback has been low even though the driver has been in the kernel since v1.1.25.
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: apricot
This on board ethernet uses an i82596 bus-master chip. It can only be at I/O address
0x300
. By looking at the driver source, it appears that the IRQ is also hardwired to 10.
Earlier versions of the driver had a tendency to think that anything living at
0x300
was an apricot NIC. Since then the hardware address is checked to avoid these false detections.
Status: Supported, Driver Name: arcnet (arc-rimi, com90xx, com20020)
With the very low cost and better performance of ethernet, chances are that most places will be giving away their Arcnet hardware for free, resulting in a lot of home systems with Arcnet.
An advantage of Arcnet is that all of the cards have identical interfaces, so one driver will work for everyone. It also has built in error handling so that it supposedly never loses a packet. (Great for UDP traffic!) Note that the arcnet driver uses `arc0' as its name instead of the usual `eth0' for ethernet devices.
There are information files contained in the standard kernel for setting jumpers, general hints and where to mail bug reports.
Supposedly the driver also works with the 100Mbs ARCnet cards as well!
Yes, they make more than just multi-port serial cards.
Status: Supported, Driver Name: ne (+8390)
Apparently this is a NE2000 clone, using a VIA VT86C916 chip.
Status: Supported, Driver Name: lance, pcnet32
These cards are based on AMD's PCnet chips. Many people reported endless problems with these VLB/PCI cards. The problem was supposedly due to Boca not installing some capacitors that AMD recommended. (The older ISA cards don't appear to suffer the same problems.) Boca was offering a `warranty repair' for affected owners, which involved adding one of the missing capacitors, but it appears that this fix didn't work 100 percent for most people, although it helped some. The cards are so old now that it wouldn't be worth pursuing.
More general information on the AMD chips can be found in AMD LANCE .
Status: Supported, Driver Name: acenic
Status: Supported, Driver Name: tg3
Lack of programming information from Cabletron at the time drivers were being developed for these cards meant that the drivers were not supported as well as they could have been.
Apparently Cabletron has since changed their policy with respect to programming information (like Xircom). However, at this point in time, there is little demand for modified/updated drivers for the old E20xx and E21xx cards.
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: ne (+8390)
These are NEx000 almost-clones that are reported to work with the standard NEx000 drivers, thanks to a ctron-specific check during the probe.
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: e2100 (+8390)
The E2100 is a poor design. Whenever it maps its shared memory in during a packet transfer, it maps it into the whole 128K region! That means you can't safely use another interrupt-driven shared memory device in that region, including another E2100. It will work most of the time, but every once in a while it will bite you. (Yes, this problem can be avoided by turning off interrupts while transferring packets, but that will almost certainly lose clock ticks.) Also, if you mis-program the board, or halt the machine at just the wrong moment, even the reset button won't bring it back. You will have to turn it off and leave it off for about 30 seconds.
Media selection is automatic, but you can override this with the low bits of the dev->mem_end parameter. See PARAM_2
. Module users can specify an
xcvr=N
value as an
option
in the
/etc/modules.conf
file.
Also, don't confuse the E2100 for a NE2100 clone. The E2100 is a shared memory NatSemi DP8390 design, roughly similar to a brain-damaged WD8013, whereas the NE2100 (and NE1500) use a bus-mastering AMD LANCE design.
If you intend on using this driver as a loadable module you should probably see Using the Ethernet Drivers as Modules for module specific information.
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: lance
According to information in a Cabletron Tech Bulletin, these cards use the standard AMD PC-Net chipset (see AMD PC-Net ) and should work with the generic lance driver.
Status: Semi-Supported, Driver Name: smc9194
These cards use the SMC 91c100 chip and may work with the SMC 91c92 driver, but this has yet to be verified.
Status: Supported, Driver Name: de4x5, tulip
These are yet another DEC 21040 implementation that should hopefully work fine with the standard 21040 driver.
The EM400 and the EM964 are four port cards using a DEC 21050 bridge and 4 21040 chips.
See DEC 21040 for more information on these cards, and the present driver situation.
Compaq aren't really in the business of making ethernet cards, but a lot of their systems have embedded ethernet controllers on the motherboard.
Status: Supported, Driver Name: pcnet32
Machines such as the XL series have an AMD 79c97x PCI chip on the mainboard that can be used with the standard LANCE driver. But before you can use it, you have to do some trickery to get the PCI BIOS to a place where Linux can see it. Frank Maas was kind enough to provide the details:
`` The problem with this Compaq machine however is that the PCI directory is loaded in high memory, at a spot where the Linux kernel can't (won't) reach. Result: the card is never detected nor is it usable (sideline: the mouse won't work either) The workaround (as described thoroughly in http://www-c724.uibk.ac.at/XL/) is to load MS-DOS, launch a little driver Compaq wrote and then load the Linux kernel using LOADLIN. Ok, I'll give you time to say `yuck, yuck', but for now this is the only working solution I know of. The little driver simply moves the PCI directory to a place where it is normally stored (and where Linux can find it).''
The DOS utility
movepci.exe
is apparently in Compaq's support package
SP1599.EXE
if you still need it.
More general information on the AMD chips can be found in AMD LANCE .
Status: Supported, Driver Name: tlan
These systems use a Texas Instruments ThunderLAN chip Information on the ThunderLAN driver can be found in ThunderLAN .
Status: Supported, Driver Name: eepro100
Check your card - if it has part number 323551-821 and/or an intel 82558 chip on it then it is another Intel EEPro100 based card.
Status: Supported, Driver Name: de4x5, tulip
Yet another card based on the DEC 21040 chip, reported to work fine, and at a relatively cheap price.
See DEC 21040 for more information on these cards, and the present driver situation.
Status: Supported, Driver Name: tulip, dmfe
This is an almost clone of the tulip chip and so you can use the tulip driver or the vendor supplied dmfe driver. Usual advice is to try tulip first, and then try dmfe. Apparently dmfe is only better for very very old cards.
Status: Supported, Driver Name: ne (+8390)
Some of the early D-Link cards didn't have the
0x57
PROM signature, but the ne2000 driver knows about them. For the software configurable cards, you can get the config program from
www.dlink.com
. Note that there are also cards from Digital (DEC) that are also named DE100 and DE200, but the similarity stops there.
Status: Supported, Driver Name: pcnet32
This is a PCI card using the PCI version of AMD's LANCE chip. DMA selection and chip numbering information can be found in AMD LANCE .
Status: Supported, Driver Name: ne, ne2k-pci (+8390)
Apparently D-Link have also started making PCI NE2000 clones.
Status: Supported, Driver Name: de4x5, tulip
This is a generic DEC 21040 PCI chip implementation, and is reported to work with the generic 21040 tulip driver. Note that this is NOT the DFE-530.
See DEC 21040 for more information on these cards, and the present driver situation.
Status: Supported, Driver Name: de600
The DE600 is an old parallel port ethernet adaptor made for laptop users etc. Expect about 180kb/s transfer speed from this device. You should read the README.DLINK file in the kernel source tree. Note that the device name that you pass to
ifconfig
is
now
eth0
and not the previously used
dl0
.
Status: Supported, Driver Name: de620
Similar to the the DE-600, only with two output formats. See the above information on the DE-600.
Status: Supported, Driver Name: pcnet_cs
Some people have been using this PCMCIA card for some time now with their notebooks. It is a basic 8390 design, much like a NE2000. The LinkSys PCMCIA card and the IC-Card Ethernet are supposedly DE-650 clones as well.
Status Supported, Driver Name: via-rhine
Another card using the VIA Rhine chipset. Newer cards use the Rhine-II. (see VIA Rhine ) Don't confuse this with the DE-530 which is a tulip based card, or the DFE-530+ which is an 8139.
Status Supported, Driver Name: 8139too, rtl8139(old)
This card uses the RealTek 8139 chip - see the section RealTek 8139 .
Status Supported, Driver Name: sundance
Status Supported, Driver Name: tulip
This is a four port tulip (DS21143) card.
Status Supported, Driver Name: sundance
Status: Supported, Driver Name: ns83820
Status Supported, Driver Name: dl2k
Status: Supported, Driver Name: ne (+8390)
Yet another poor NE clone card - these use `DFI' in the first 3 bytes of the prom, instead of using
0x57
in