le(4)

NAME

le - AMD Am7900 LANCE and Am79C9xx PCnet Ethernet interface

driver

SYNOPSIS

To  compile this driver into the kernel, place the following
line in your
kernel configuration file:
      device le
Alternatively, to load the driver as a module at boot  time,
place the
following line in loader.conf(5):
      if_le_load="YES"

DESCRIPTION

The le driver provides support for Ethernet adapters based

on the AMD
Am7990 and Am79C90 (CMOS, pin-compatible) Local Area Network

Controller
for Ethernet (LANCE) chip set.

The le driver also supports PCnet adapters based on the AMD

79C9xx family
of chips, which are single-chip implementations of a LANCE

chip and a DMA
engine. This includes a superset of the PCI bus Ethernet

chip sets supported by the pcn(4) driver. The le driver treats all of

these PCI bus
Ethernet chip sets as an AMD Am79C970 PCnet-PCI and does not

support the
additional features like the MII bus and burst mode of AMD

Am79C971
PCnet-FAST and greater chip sets. Thus the pcn(4) driver

should be preferred for the latter.

The le driver supports reception and transmission of extend

ed frames for
vlan(4). Selective reception of multicast Ethernet frames

is provided by
a 64-bit mask; multicast destination addresses are hashed to

a bit entry
using the Ethernet CRC function.

HARDWARE

PCI

The PCI bus Ethernet chip sets supported by the le driver

are:

+o AMD Am53C974/Am79C970/Am79C974 PCnet-PCI
+o AMD Am79C970A PCnet-PCI II
+o AMD Am79C971 PCnet-FAST
+o AMD Am79C972 PCnet-FAST+
+o AMD Am79C973/Am79C975 PCnet-FAST III
+o AMD Am79C976 PCnet-PRO
+o AMD Am79C978 PCnet-Home

The le driver supports the following media types with these

chip sets:

autoselect Enable autoselection of the media

type.

10baseT/UTP Select UTP media.

10base5/AUI Select AUI/BNC media.

The following media option is supported with these media

types:

full-duplex Select full duplex operation.

Note that unlike the pcn(4) driver, the le driver does not

support
selecting 100Mbps (Fast Ethernet) media types.

sparc64

The le driver supports the on-board LANCE interfaces found

in Sun Ultra 1
machines. The following media types are available with

these:

autoselect Enable autoselection of the media

type.

10baseT/UTP Select UTP media.

10base5/AUI Select AUI media.

When using autoselection, a default media type is selected

for use by
examining all ports for carrier. The first media type with

which a carrier is detected will be selected. Additionally, if carrier

is dropped
on a port, the driver will switch between the possible ports

until one
with carrier is found.

For further information on configuring media types and op

tions, see
ifconfig(8).

DIAGNOSTICS

le%d: overflow More packets came in from the Ethernet than

there was
space in the LANCE receive buffers. Packets were missed.

le%d: receive buffer error The LANCE ran out of buffer

space, packet
dropped.

le%d: lost carrier The Ethernet carrier disappeared during

an attempt to
transmit. The LANCE will finish transmitting the current

packet, but
will not automatically retry transmission if there is a col

lision.

le%d: excessive collisions, tdr %d The Ethernet was ex

tremely busy or
jammed, outbound packets were dropped after 16 attempts to

retransmit.

TDR is the abbreviation of "Time Domain Reflectometry". The

optionally
reported TDR value is an internal counter of the interval

between the
start of a transmission and the occurrence of a collision.

This value
can be used to determine the distance from the Ethernet tap

to the point
on the Ethernet cable that is shorted or open (unterminat

ed).

le%d: dropping chained buffer A packet did not fit into a

single receive
buffer and was dropped. Since the le driver allocates

buffers large
enough to receive maximum sized Ethernet packets, this means

some other
station on the LAN transmitted a packet larger than allowed

by the Ethernet standard.

le%d: transmit buffer error The LANCE ran out of buffer

space before
finishing the transmission of a packet. If this error oc

curs, the driver
software has a bug.

le%d: underflow The LANCE ran out of buffer space before

finishing the
transmission of a packet. If this error occurs, the driver

software has
a bug.

le%d: controller failed to initialize Driver failed to

start the LANCE.
This is potentially a hardware failure.

le%d: memory error RAM failed to respond within the timeout

when the
LANCE wanted to read or write it. This is potentially a

hardware failure.

le%d: receiver disabled The receiver of the LANCE was

turned off due to
an error.

le%d: transmitter disabled The transmitter of the LANCE was

turned off
due to an error.

SEE ALSO

arp(4), intro(4), netintro(4), pcn(4), vlan(4), ifconfig(8)

HISTORY

The le driver was ported from NetBSD and first appeared in

FreeBSD 6.1.
The NetBSD version in turn was derived from the le driver

which first
appeared in 4.4BSD.

AUTHORS

The le driver was ported by Marius Strobl <marius@FreeB

SD.org>.

BSD January 30, 2006

BSD