rl(4)
NAME
rl - RealTek 8129/8139 Fast Ethernet device driver
SYNOPSIS
To compile this driver into the kernel, place the following
lines in your
kernel configuration file:
device miibus
device rl
Alternatively, to load the driver as a module at boot time,
place the
following line in loader.conf(5):
if_rl_load="YES"
DESCRIPTION
- The rl driver provides support for PCI Ethernet adapters and
- embedded
controllers based on the RealTek 8129 and 8139 Fast Ethernet - controller
chips. - The RealTek 8129/8139 series controllers use bus master DMA
- but do not
use a descriptor-based data transfer mechanism. The receiv - er uses a single fixed size ring buffer from which packets must be copied
- into mbufs.
For transmission, there are only four outbound packet ad - dress registers
which require all outgoing packets to be stored as contigu - ous buffers.
Furthermore, outbound packet buffers must be longword - aligned or else
transmission will fail. - The 8129 differs from the 8139 in that the 8139 has an in
- ternal PHY which
is controlled through special direct access registers where - as the 8129
uses an external PHY via an MII bus. The 8139 supports both - 10 and
100Mbps speeds in either full or half duplex. The 8129 can - support the
same speeds and modes given an appropriate PHY chip. - Note: support for the 8139C+ chip is provided by the re(4)
- driver.
- The rl driver supports the following media types:
- autoselect Enable autoselection of the media type
- and options.
- This is only supported if the PHY chip
- attached to
the RealTek controller supports NWAY - autonegotiation. The user can manually override
- the autoselected mode by adding media options to
- the
/etc/rc.conf file. - 10baseT/UTP Set 10Mbps operation. The mediaopt
- option can also
- be used to select either full-duplex
- or half-duplex
modes. - 100baseTX Set 100Mbps (Fast Ethernet) operation.
- The
- mediaopt option can also be used to
- select either
full-duplex or half-duplex modes. - The rl driver supports the following media options:
- full-duplex Force full duplex operation
- half-duplex Force half duplex operation.
- Note that the 100baseTX media type is only available if sup
- ported by the
adapter. For more information on configuring this device, - see
ifconfig(8).
HARDWARE
Adapters supported by the rl driver include:
- +o Accton ``Cheetah'' EN1207D (MPX 5030/5038; RealTek 8139
- clone)
+o Allied Telesyn AT2550
+o Allied Telesyn AT2500TX
+o Belkin F5D5000
+o BUFFALO (Melco INC.) LPC-CB-CLX (CardBus)
+o Compaq HNE-300
+o CompUSA no-name 10/100 PCI Ethernet NIC
+o Corega FEther CB-TXD
+o Corega FEtherII CB-TXD
+o D-Link DFE-528TX
+o D-Link DFE-530TX+
+o D-Link DFE-538TX
+o D-Link DFE-690TXD
+o Edimax EP-4103DL CardBus
+o Encore ENL832-TX 10/100 M PCI
+o Farallon NetLINE 10/100 PCI
+o Genius GF100TXR
+o GigaFast Ethernet EE100-AXP
+o KTX-9130TX 10/100 Fast Ethernet
+o LevelOne FPC-0106TX
+o Longshine LCS-8038TX-R
+o NDC Communications NE100TX-E
+o Netronix Inc. EA-1210 NetEther 10/100
+o Nortel Networks 10/100BaseTX
+o OvisLink LEF-8129TX
+o OvisLink LEF-8139TX
+o Peppercon AG ROL-F
+o Planex FNW-3800-TX
+o SMC EZ Card 10/100 PCI 1211-TX
+o SOHO (PRAGMATIC) UE-1211C
DIAGNOSTICS
- rl%d: couldn't map memory A fatal initialization error has
- occurred.
- rl%d: couldn't map interrupt A fatal initialization error
- has occurred.
- rl%d: watchdog timeout The device has stopped responding to
- the network,
or there is a problem with the network connection (cable). - rl%d: no memory for rx list The driver failed to allocate
- an mbuf for
the receiver ring. - rl%d: no memory for tx list The driver failed to allocate
- an mbuf for
the transmitter ring when allocating a pad buffer or col - lapsing an mbuf
chain into a cluster. - rl%d: chip is in D3 power state -- setting to D0 This mes
- sage applies
only to adapters which support power management. Some oper - ating systems
place the controller in low power mode when shutting down, - and some PCI
BIOSes fail to bring the chip out of this state before con - figuring it.
The controller loses all of its PCI configuration in the D3 - state, so if
the BIOS does not set it back to full power mode in time, it - will not be
able to configure it correctly. The driver tries to detect - this condition and bring the adapter back to the D0 (full power)
- state, but this
may not be enough to return the driver to a fully opera - tional condition.
If you see this message at boot time and the driver fails to - attach the
device as a network interface, you will have to perform sec - ond warm boot
to have the device properly configured. - Note that this condition only occurs when warm booting from
- another operating system. If you power down your system prior to boot
- ing FreeBSD,
the card should be configured correctly.
SEE ALSO
- arp(4), miibus(4), netintro(4), ng_ether(4), polling(4), if
- config(8)
- The RealTek 8129, 8139 and 8139C+ datasheets, http://www.re
- altek.com.tw.
HISTORY
The rl device driver first appeared in FreeBSD 3.0.
AUTHORS
- The rl driver was written by Bill Paul
- <wpaul@ctr.columbia.edu>.
BUGS
- Since outbound packets must be longword aligned, the trans
- mit routine has
to copy an unaligned packet into an mbuf cluster buffer be - fore transmission. The driver abuses the fact that the cluster buffer
- pool is allocated at system startup time in a contiguous region starting
- at a page
boundary. Since cluster buffers are 2048 bytes, they are - longword
aligned by definition. The driver probably should not be - depending on
this characteristic. - The RealTek data sheets are of especially poor quality, and
- there is a
lot of information missing particularly concerning the re - ceiver operation. One particularly important fact that the data sheets
- fail to mention relates to the way in which the chip fills in the re
- ceive buffer.
When an interrupt is posted to signal that a frame has been - received, it
is possible that another frame might be in the process of - being copied
into the receive buffer while the driver is busy handling - the first one.
If the driver manages to finish processing the first frame - before the
chip is done DMAing the rest of the next frame, the driver - may attempt to
process the next frame in the buffer before the chip has had - a chance to
finish DMAing all of it. - The driver can check for an incomplete frame by inspecting
- the frame
length in the header preceding the actual packet data: an - incomplete
frame will have the magic length of 0xFFF0. When the driver - encounters
this value, it knows that it has finished processing all - currently available packets. Neither this magic value nor its significance
- are documented anywhere in the RealTek data sheets.
- BSD July 16, 2005