xref: /freebsd/share/man/man4/vr.4 (revision 66e576525d35c68fcb86f142ebaa5a448555c0c7)
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31.\" $FreeBSD$
32.\"
33.Dd February 7, 2010
34.Dt VR 4
35.Os
36.Sh NAME
37.Nm vr
38.Nd "VIA Technologies Rhine I/II/III 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 vr"
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_vr_load="YES"
53.Ed
54.Sh DESCRIPTION
55The
56.Nm
57driver provides support for PCI Ethernet adapters and embedded
58controllers based on the VIA Technologies VT3043 Rhine I,
59VT86C100A Rhine II, and VT6105/VT6105M Rhine III Fast Ethernet
60controller chips.
61.Pp
62The VIA Rhine chips use bus master DMA and have a descriptor layout
63designed to resemble that of the DEC 21x4x
64.Dq tulip
65chips.
66The register
67layout is different however and the receive filter in the Rhine chips
68is much simpler and is programmed through registers rather than by
69downloading a special setup frame through the transmit DMA engine.
70Transmit and receive DMA buffers must be longword
71aligned.
72The Rhine chips are meant to be interfaced with external
73physical layer devices via an MII bus.
74They support both
7510 and 100Mbps speeds in either full or half duplex.
76.Pp
77The
78.Nm
79driver supports the following media types:
80.Pp
81.Bl -tag -width xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
82.It autoselect
83Enable autoselection of the media type and options.
84The user can manually override
85the autoselected mode by adding media options to the
86.Pa /etc/rc.conf
87file.
88.It 10baseT/UTP
89Set 10Mbps operation.
90The
91.Ar mediaopt
92option can also be used to select either
93.Ar full-duplex
94or
95.Ar half-duplex
96modes.
97.It 100baseTX
98Set 100Mbps (Fast Fthernet) operation.
99The
100.Ar mediaopt
101option can also be used to select either
102.Ar full-duplex
103or
104.Ar half-duplex
105modes.
106.El
107.Pp
108The
109.Nm
110driver supports the following media options:
111.Pp
112.Bl -tag -width xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
113.It full-duplex
114Force full duplex operation
115.It half-duplex
116Force half duplex operation.
117.El
118.Pp
119Note that the 100baseTX media type is only available if supported
120by the adapter.
121For more information on configuring this device, see
122.Xr ifconfig 8 .
123.Sh HARDWARE
124The
125.Nm
126driver supports VIA Technologies Rhine I, Rhine II, and Rhine III based
127Fast Ethernet adapters including:
128.Pp
129.Bl -bullet -compact
130.It
131AOpen/Acer ALN-320
132.It
133D-Link DFE520-TX
134.It
135D-Link DFE530-TX
136.It
137Hawking Technologies PN102TX
138.It
139Soekris Engineering net5501
140.El
141.Sh SYSCTL VARIABLES
142The following variables are available as
143.Xr sysctl 8
144variables:
145.Bl -tag -width indent
146.It Va dev.vr.%d.stats
147Display lots of useful MAC counters maintained in the driver.
148.El
149.Sh DIAGNOSTICS
150.Bl -diag
151.It "vr%d: couldn't map memory"
152A fatal initialization error has occurred.
153.It "vr%d: couldn't map interrupt"
154A fatal initialization error has occurred.
155.It "vr%d: watchdog timeout"
156The device has stopped responding to the network, or there is a problem with
157the network connection (cable).
158.It "vr%d: no memory for rx list"
159The driver failed to allocate an mbuf for the receiver ring.
160.It "vr%d: no memory for tx list"
161The driver failed to allocate an mbuf for the transmitter ring when
162allocating a pad buffer or collapsing an mbuf chain into a cluster.
163.It "vr%d: chip is in D3 power state -- setting to D0"
164This message applies only to adapters which support power
165management.
166Some operating systems place the controller in low power
167mode when shutting down, and some PCI BIOSes fail to bring the chip
168out of this state before configuring it.
169The controller loses all of
170its PCI configuration in the D3 state, so if the BIOS does not set
171it back to full power mode in time, it will not be able to configure it
172correctly.
173The driver tries to detect this condition and bring
174the adapter back to the D0 (full power) state, but this may not be
175enough to return the driver to a fully operational condition.
176If
177you see this message at boot time and the driver fails to attach
178the device as a network interface, you will have to perform second
179warm boot to have the device properly configured.
180.Pp
181Note that this condition only occurs when warm booting from another
182operating system.
183If you power down your system prior to booting
184.Fx ,
185the card should be configured correctly.
186.El
187.Sh SEE ALSO
188.Xr altq 4 ,
189.Xr arp 4 ,
190.Xr miibus 4 ,
191.Xr netintro 4 ,
192.Xr ng_ether 4 ,
193.Xr polling 4 ,
194.Xr ifconfig 8
195.Rs
196.%T The VIA Technologies VT86C100A data sheet
197.%U http://www.via.com.tw
198.Re
199.Sh HISTORY
200The
201.Nm
202device driver first appeared in
203.Fx 3.0 .
204.Sh AUTHORS
205The
206.Nm
207driver was written by
208.An Bill Paul Aq wpaul@ctr.columbia.edu .
209.Sh BUGS
210The
211.Nm
212driver always copies transmit mbuf chains into longword-aligned
213buffers prior to transmission in order to pacify the Rhine chips.
214If buffers are not aligned correctly, the chip will round the
215supplied buffer address and begin DMAing from the wrong location.
216This buffer copying impairs transmit performance on slower systems but cannot
217be avoided.
218On faster machines (e.g.\& a Pentium II), the performance
219impact is much less noticeable.
220