xref: /freebsd/share/man/man4/vr.4 (revision 7899f917b1c0ea178f1d2be0cfb452086d079d23)
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31.Dd February 25, 2012
32.Dt VR 4
33.Os
34.Sh NAME
35.Nm vr
36.Nd "VIA Technologies Rhine I/II/III Ethernet device driver"
37.Sh SYNOPSIS
38To compile this driver into the kernel,
39place the following lines in your
40kernel configuration file:
41.Bd -ragged -offset indent
42.Cd "device miibus"
43.Cd "device vr"
44.Ed
45.Pp
46Alternatively, to load the driver as a
47module at boot time, place the following line in
48.Xr loader.conf 5 :
49.Bd -literal -offset indent
50if_vr_load="YES"
51.Ed
52.Sh DESCRIPTION
53The
54.Nm
55driver provides support for PCI Ethernet adapters and embedded
56controllers based on the VIA Technologies VT3043 Rhine I,
57VT86C100A Rhine II, and VT6105/VT6105M Rhine III Fast Ethernet
58controller chips.
59.Pp
60The VIA Rhine chips use bus master DMA and have a descriptor layout
61designed to resemble that of the DEC 21x4x
62.Dq tulip
63chips.
64The register
65layout is different however and the receive filter in the Rhine chips
66is much simpler and is programmed through registers rather than by
67downloading a special setup frame through the transmit DMA engine.
68Transmit and receive DMA buffers must be longword
69aligned.
70The Rhine chips are meant to be interfaced with external
71physical layer devices via an MII bus.
72They support both
7310 and 100Mbps speeds in either full or half duplex.
74.Pp
75The
76.Nm
77driver supports the following media types:
78.Bl -tag -width xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
79.It autoselect
80Enable autoselection of the media type and options.
81The user can manually override
82the autoselected mode by adding media options to the
83.Pa /etc/rc.conf
84file.
85.It 10baseT/UTP
86Set 10Mbps operation.
87The
88.Ar mediaopt
89option can also be used to select either
90.Ar full-duplex
91or
92.Ar half-duplex
93modes.
94.It 100baseTX
95Set 100Mbps (Fast Ethernet) operation.
96The
97.Ar mediaopt
98option can also be used to select either
99.Ar full-duplex
100or
101.Ar half-duplex
102modes.
103.El
104.Pp
105The
106.Nm
107driver supports the following media options:
108.Bl -tag -width xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
109.It full-duplex
110Force full duplex operation.
111.It half-duplex
112Force half duplex operation.
113.El
114.Pp
115Note that the 100baseTX media type is only available if supported
116by the adapter.
117For more information on configuring this device, see
118.Xr ifconfig 8 .
119.Sh HARDWARE
120The
121.Nm
122driver supports VIA Technologies Rhine I, Rhine II, and Rhine III based
123Fast Ethernet adapters including:
124.Pp
125.Bl -bullet -compact
126.It
127AOpen/Acer ALN-320
128.It
129D-Link DFE520-TX
130.It
131D-Link DFE530-TX
132.It
133Hawking Technologies PN102TX
134.It
135Soekris Engineering net5501
136.El
137.Sh SYSCTL VARIABLES
138The following variables are available as
139.Xr sysctl 8
140variables:
141.Bl -tag -width indent
142.It Va dev.vr.%d.stats
143Display lots of useful MAC counters maintained in the driver.
144.El
145.Sh DIAGNOSTICS
146.Bl -diag
147.It "vr%d: couldn't map memory"
148A fatal initialization error has occurred.
149.It "vr%d: couldn't map interrupt"
150A fatal initialization error has occurred.
151.It "vr%d: watchdog timeout"
152The device has stopped responding to the network, or there is a problem with
153the network connection (cable).
154.It "vr%d: no memory for rx list"
155The driver failed to allocate an mbuf for the receiver ring.
156.It "vr%d: no memory for tx list"
157The driver failed to allocate an mbuf for the transmitter ring when
158allocating a pad buffer or collapsing an mbuf chain into a cluster.
159.It "vr%d: chip is in D3 power state -- setting to D0"
160This message applies only to adapters which support power
161management.
162Some operating systems place the controller in low power
163mode when shutting down, and some PCI BIOSes fail to bring the chip
164out of this state before configuring it.
165The controller loses all of
166its PCI configuration in the D3 state, so if the BIOS does not set
167it back to full power mode in time, it will not be able to configure it
168correctly.
169The driver tries to detect this condition and bring
170the adapter back to the D0 (full power) state, but this may not be
171enough to return the driver to a fully operational condition.
172If
173you see this message at boot time and the driver fails to attach
174the device as a network interface, you will have to perform second
175warm boot to have the device properly configured.
176.Pp
177Note that this condition only occurs when warm booting from another
178operating system.
179If you power down your system prior to booting
180.Fx ,
181the card should be configured correctly.
182.El
183.Sh SEE ALSO
184.Xr altq 4 ,
185.Xr arp 4 ,
186.Xr miibus 4 ,
187.Xr netintro 4 ,
188.Xr ng_ether 4 ,
189.Xr polling 4 ,
190.Xr ifconfig 8
191.Rs
192.%T The VIA Technologies VT86C100A data sheet
193.%U http://www.via.com.tw
194.Re
195.Sh HISTORY
196The
197.Nm
198device driver first appeared in
199.Fx 3.0 .
200.Sh AUTHORS
201The
202.Nm
203driver was written by
204.An Bill Paul Aq Mt wpaul@ctr.columbia.edu .
205.Sh BUGS
206The
207.Nm
208driver always copies transmit mbuf chains into longword-aligned
209buffers prior to transmission in order to pacify the Rhine chips.
210If buffers are not aligned correctly, the chip will round the
211supplied buffer address and begin DMAing from the wrong location.
212This buffer copying impairs transmit performance on slower systems but cannot
213be avoided.
214On faster machines (e.g.\& a Pentium II), the performance
215impact is much less noticeable.
216