rl4

Usage

Overview

The rl driver provides support for PCI Ethernet adapters and embedded controllers based on the Realtek 8129 and 8139 Fast Ethernet controller chips. This includes, among others, the following cards:

Accton MPX5030 CardBus

Allied Telesyn AT2550

Corega FEther CB-TXD 10/100 Ethernet

D-Link DFE-520TX C1, DFE-530TX+, DFE-538TX, DFE-690TXD

Encore ENL832-TX-RENT 10/100 M PCI

Genius GF100TXR

KTX-9130TX 10/100 Fast Ethernet

Longshine LCS-8038TX-R

NDC Communications NE100TX-E

Netgear FA311 v2

Netronix Inc. EA-1210 NetEther 10/100

Nortel BayStack 21

OvisLink LEF-8129TX, LEF-8139TX

SMC EZ Card 10/100 PCI 1211-TX

TRENDnet TE100-PCBUSR CardBus

The Realtek controllers use bus master DMA but do not use a descriptor-based data transfer mechanism. The receiver uses a single fixed size ring buffer from which packets must be copied into mbufs. For transmission, there are only four outbound packet address registers which require all outgoing packets to be stored as contiguous 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 internal PHY which is controlled through special direct access registers whereas 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.

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 appropriate hostname.if(5) file.

10baseT

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 supported by the adapter. For more information on configuring this device, see ifconfig(8).

Diagnostics

rl0: couldn't map memory

A fatal initialization error has occurred.

rl0: couldn't map interrupt

A fatal initialization error has occurred.

rl0: watchdog timeout

The device has stopped responding to the network, or there is a problem with the network connection (cable).

rl0: no memory for rx list

The driver failed to allocate an mbuf for the receiver ring.

rl0: no memory for tx list

The driver failed to allocate an mbuf for the transmitter ring when allocating a pad buffer or collapsing an mbuf chain into a cluster.