xref: /freebsd/share/man/man4/rl.4 (revision 16d78bb878deb14559061f5733b2439e9a3392cf)
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31.\" $FreeBSD$
32.\"
33.Dd July 16, 2005
34.Dt RL 4
35.Os
36.Sh NAME
37.Nm rl
38.Nd "RealTek 8129/8139 Fast Ethernet device driver"
39.Sh SYNOPSIS
40To compile this driver into the kernel,
41place the following lines in your
42kernel configuration file:
43.Bd -ragged -offset indent
44.Cd "device miibus"
45.Cd "device rl"
46.Ed
47.Pp
48Alternatively, to load the driver as a
49module at boot time, place the following line in
50.Xr loader.conf 5 :
51.Bd -literal -offset indent
52if_rl_load="YES"
53.Ed
54.Sh DESCRIPTION
55The
56.Nm
57driver provides support for PCI Ethernet adapters and embedded
58controllers based on the RealTek 8129 and 8139 Fast Ethernet controller
59chips.
60.Pp
61The RealTek 8129/8139 series controllers use bus master DMA but do not use a
62descriptor-based data transfer mechanism.
63The receiver uses a
64single fixed size ring buffer from which packets must be copied
65into mbufs.
66For transmission, there are only four outbound packet
67address registers which require all outgoing packets to be stored
68as contiguous buffers.
69Furthermore, outbound packet buffers must
70be longword aligned or else transmission will fail.
71.Pp
72The 8129 differs from the 8139 in that the 8139 has an internal
73PHY which is controlled through special direct access registers
74whereas the 8129 uses an external PHY via an MII bus.
75The 8139
76supports both 10 and 100Mbps speeds in either full or half duplex.
77The 8129 can support the same speeds and modes given an appropriate
78PHY chip.
79.Pp
80Note: support for the 8139C+ chip is provided by the
81.Xr re 4
82driver.
83.Pp
84The
85.Nm
86driver supports the following media types:
87.Pp
88.Bl -tag -width xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
89.It autoselect
90Enable autoselection of the media type and options.
91This is only
92supported if the PHY chip attached to the RealTek controller
93supports NWAY autonegotiation.
94The user can manually override
95the autoselected mode by adding media options to the
96.Pa /etc/rc.conf
97file.
98.It 10baseT/UTP
99Set 10Mbps operation.
100The
101.Ar mediaopt
102option can also be used to select either
103.Ar full-duplex
104or
105.Ar half-duplex
106modes.
107.It 100baseTX
108Set 100Mbps (Fast Ethernet) operation.
109The
110.Ar mediaopt
111option can also be used to select either
112.Ar full-duplex
113or
114.Ar half-duplex
115modes.
116.El
117.Pp
118The
119.Nm
120driver supports the following media options:
121.Pp
122.Bl -tag -width xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
123.It full-duplex
124Force full duplex operation
125.It half-duplex
126Force half duplex operation.
127.El
128.Pp
129Note that the 100baseTX media type is only available if supported
130by the adapter.
131For more information on configuring this device, see
132.Xr ifconfig 8 .
133.Sh HARDWARE
134Adapters supported by the
135.Nm
136driver include:
137.Pp
138.Bl -bullet -compact
139.It
140Accton
141.Dq Cheetah
142EN1207D (MPX 5030/5038; RealTek 8139 clone)
143.It
144Allied Telesyn AT2550
145.It
146Allied Telesyn AT2500TX
147.It
148Belkin F5D5000
149.It
150BUFFALO (Melco INC.) LPC-CB-CLX (CardBus)
151.It
152Compaq HNE-300
153.It
154CompUSA no-name 10/100 PCI Ethernet NIC
155.It
156Corega FEther CB-TXD
157.It
158Corega FEtherII CB-TXD
159.It
160D-Link DFE-528TX
161.It
162D-Link DFE-530TX+
163.It
164D-Link DFE-538TX
165.It
166D-Link DFE-690TXD
167.It
168Edimax EP-4103DL CardBus
169.It
170Encore ENL832-TX 10/100 M PCI
171.It
172Farallon NetLINE 10/100 PCI
173.It
174Genius GF100TXR
175.It
176GigaFast Ethernet EE100-AXP
177.It
178KTX-9130TX 10/100 Fast Ethernet
179.It
180LevelOne FPC-0106TX
181.It
182Longshine LCS-8038TX-R
183.It
184NDC Communications NE100TX-E
185.It
186Netronix Inc.\& EA-1210 NetEther 10/100
187.It
188Nortel Networks 10/100BaseTX
189.It
190OvisLink LEF-8129TX
191.It
192OvisLink LEF-8139TX
193.It
194Peppercon AG ROL-F
195.It
196Planex FNW-3800-TX
197.It
198SMC EZ Card 10/100 PCI 1211-TX
199.It
200SOHO (PRAGMATIC) UE-1211C
201.El
202.Sh DIAGNOSTICS
203.Bl -diag
204.It "rl%d: couldn't map memory"
205A fatal initialization error has occurred.
206.It "rl%d: couldn't map interrupt"
207A fatal initialization error has occurred.
208.It "rl%d: watchdog timeout"
209The device has stopped responding to the network, or there is a problem with
210the network connection (cable).
211.It "rl%d: no memory for rx list"
212The driver failed to allocate an mbuf for the receiver ring.
213.It "rl%d: no memory for tx list"
214The driver failed to allocate an mbuf for the transmitter ring when
215allocating a pad buffer or collapsing an mbuf chain into a cluster.
216.It "rl%d: chip is in D3 power state -- setting to D0"
217This message applies only to adapters which support power
218management.
219Some operating systems place the controller in low power
220mode when shutting down, and some PCI BIOSes fail to bring the chip
221out of this state before configuring it.
222The controller loses all of
223its PCI configuration in the D3 state, so if the BIOS does not set
224it back to full power mode in time, it will not be able to configure it
225correctly.
226The driver tries to detect this condition and bring
227the adapter back to the D0 (full power) state, but this may not be
228enough to return the driver to a fully operational condition.
229If
230you see this message at boot time and the driver fails to attach
231the device as a network interface, you will have to perform second
232warm boot to have the device properly configured.
233.Pp
234Note that this condition only occurs when warm booting from another
235operating system.
236If you power down your system prior to booting
237.Fx ,
238the card should be configured correctly.
239.El
240.Sh SEE ALSO
241.Xr arp 4 ,
242.Xr miibus 4 ,
243.Xr netintro 4 ,
244.Xr ng_ether 4 ,
245.Xr polling 4 ,
246.Xr ifconfig 8
247.Rs
248.%B The RealTek 8129, 8139 and 8139C+ datasheets
249.%O http://www.realtek.com.tw
250.Re
251.Sh HISTORY
252The
253.Nm
254device driver first appeared in
255.Fx 3.0 .
256.Sh AUTHORS
257The
258.Nm
259driver was written by
260.An Bill Paul Aq wpaul@ctr.columbia.edu .
261.Sh BUGS
262Since outbound packets must be longword aligned, the transmit
263routine has to copy an unaligned packet into an mbuf cluster buffer
264before transmission.
265The driver abuses the fact that the cluster buffer
266pool is allocated at system startup time in a contiguous region starting
267at a page boundary.
268Since cluster buffers are 2048 bytes, they are
269longword aligned by definition.
270The driver probably should not be
271depending on this characteristic.
272.Pp
273The RealTek data sheets are of especially poor quality,
274and there is a lot of information missing
275particularly concerning the receiver operation.
276One particularly
277important fact that the data sheets fail to mention relates to the
278way in which the chip fills in the receive buffer.
279When an interrupt
280is posted to signal that a frame has been received, it is possible that
281another frame might be in the process of being copied into the receive
282buffer while the driver is busy handling the first one.
283If the driver
284manages to finish processing the first frame before the chip is done
285DMAing the rest of the next frame, the driver may attempt to process
286the next frame in the buffer before the chip has had a chance to finish
287DMAing all of it.
288.Pp
289The driver can check for an incomplete frame by inspecting the frame
290length in the header preceding the actual packet data: an incomplete
291frame will have the magic length of 0xFFF0.
292When the driver encounters
293this value, it knows that it has finished processing all currently
294available packets.
295Neither this magic value nor its significance are
296documented anywhere in the RealTek data sheets.
297