FE(4)

NAME
fe - Fujitsu MB86960A/MB86965A based Ethernet adapters

SYNOPSIS
device fe0 at isa? port ? net irq ? vector feintr

DESCRIPTION
The fe is a network device driver for Fujitsu MB86960A/MB86965A based Ethernet adapters.

Performance decline to support multicast is kept minimum by the assistance of multicast address filter hardware built in the chip. The driver also supports duplex operation.

The driver provides automatic I/O port address configuration and automatic IRQ configuration, when used with suitable adapter hardware.

The driver works with program I/O data transfer technique. It gives a fair performance. Shared memory is never used, even if the adapter has one.

It currently works with Fujitsu FMV-180 series for ISA, and Allied-Telesis AT1700 series and RE2000 series for ISA.

  Parameters
On the kernel configuration file, two parameters, port and irq, must be specified to reflect adapter hardware settings. Another parameter flags can be specified to provide additional configuration as an option. Other parameters of the device statement must appear as described on the synopsis.

The port parameter specifies a base I/O port address of the adapter. It must match with the hardware setting of the adapter. The port may be a left unspecified as “”?. In that case, the driver tries to detect the hardware setting of the I/O address automatically. This feature may not work with some adapter hardware.

The irq parameter specifies an IRQ number used by the adapter. It must match the hardware setting of the adapter. Irq may be left unspecified as “”?; in that case, the driver tries to detect the hardware setting of the IRQ automatically. This feature may not work on some adapters.

The flags is a numeric value which consists of a combination of various device settings. The following flags are defined in the current version. To specify two or more settings for a device, use a numeric sum of each flag value. Flag bits not specified below are reserved and must be set to 0. Actually, each bit is either just ignored by the driver, or tested and used to control undocumented features of the driver. Consult the source program for undocumented features.

0x007F
    These flag bits are used to initialize DLCR6 register of MB86960A/MB86965A chip, when the 0x0080 bit of the flags is set. See below for more about DLCR6 override feature. The 0x007F flag bits must be 0 unless the 0x0080 bit is set, to maintain the compatibility with future versions of the driver.

0x0080
    This flag overrides the default setting to the DLCR6 register of MB86960A/MB86965A chip by a user supplied value, which is taken from the lower 7 bits of the flag value. This is a troubleshooting flag and should not be used without understanding of the adapter hardware. Consult the Fujitsu manual for more information on DLCR6 settings.

OPTIONS
The fe driver has some private options, which can be specified with an “option” statement in the kernel configuration file. The following lists the private options. The driver also accepts some other undocumented options, all of whose names start with a fixed prefix FE_. Consult the source program for undocumented options.

FE_DEBUG=level
    This option takes a numeric value level which controls the debugging level for the device and/or the driver. Setting the FE_DEBUG option to a value which is not listed here may cause undocumented behavior. The default setting of this option varies from version to version. For version 0.8, the default is 1.

    •   Setting FE_DEBUG=0 makes most of debugging codes, including sanity check, be excluded from the object code of the driver. It generates fastest and smallest object code. Some emergency messages are logged even under this setting, though.

    •   Setting FE_DEBUG=1 makes minimum debugging codes be included, setting the amount of logged messages minimum. Only fatal error messages are logged under this setting.

    •   Setting FE_DEBUG=2 makes standard debugging codes be included, setting the amount of logged messages middle. Messages on lair events and/or questionable conditions are logged under this setting.

    •   Setting FE_DEBUG=3 makes all debugging codes be included, and set the amount of legged messages maximum. Redundant messages such as those reporting usual actions or dumping register values are logged under this setting.

HARDWARE DEPENDENCY
The fe driver has some features and limitations which depend on adapter hardwares. The following is a summary of such dependency.

  Fujitsu FMV-180 series adapters
Both automatic IRQ detection and automatic I/O port address detection is available with these adapters.

Automatic I/O port address detection feature works even if there are two or more FMV-180 cards in a system. It is recomended to use port? always.

The hardware setting of IRQ is always taken from the configuration EEPROM on the adapter. The user-specified IRQ is never used if the fe driver is configured for FMV-180.

  Allied-Telesis AT1700 series and RE2000 series adapters
Automatic I/O port address detection is available with these adapters. Automatic IRQ detection is also available with a limitation.

Automatic I/O port address detection feature works even if there are two or more AT1700 and/or RE2000 cards in a system. It is recomended to use port? always.

The fe driver tries to get IRQ setting from the configuration EEPROM on the board, if “irq”? is specified in the configuration file. Unfortunately, AT1700 series and RE2000 series seems to have two types of models; One type allows IRQ selection from 3/4/5/9, while the other from 10/11/12/15. Identification of the models are not well known. Hence, automatic IRQ detection with Allied-Telesis adapters may not be reliable. Specify exact IRQ number if any troubles are encoutered.

All of AT1700/RE2000 type adapters are reported as just ‘AT1700’ by the driver. Differences between AT1700 series and RE2000 series or minor models in those series are not recognized.

Support of this hardware is still under development. It may or may not work.

DIAGNOSTICS

  Level 0 messages
The following messages will be reported when FE_DEBUG option is set to 0.

address %s, type %s The message shows an Ethernet station address and an adapter type. This is a normal message.

  Level 1 messages
The following messages, as well as level 0 messages, will be reported when FE_DEBUG option is set to 1.

transmission timeout (%d+%d) The driver had passed one or more out-going packets to the MB86960A/MB86965A to transmit, but the chip did not respond in an appropriate time limit. This may be an indication of an inappropriate hardware installation, e.g., wrong IRQ setting.

transmission timeout (%d+%d) when down The kernel informed fe a transmittion timeout condition, when the device was not working. This may be an indication of a serious bug.

init() without any address The driver has been started, but no valid network address has been set.

invalid station address (%s) The driver found its own Ehternet station address is invalid, i.e., it was either broadcast address, multicast address, or of null-vendor. This may be a result of an attempt to set such address through some ioctl() calls.

cannot empty receive buffer When starting up, fe tries to clean out everything in the packet receive buffer memory. This message indicates a failure to do so. This can only be caused by a driver bug and/or a broken hardware.

inconsistent txb variables (%d, %d) The driver found some internal buffer management variables in contradicting states. This is an indication of a driver bug.

transmitter idle with %d buffered packets The driver found that the transmitter part of the MB86960A/MB86965A was not working, while one or more outgoing packets were queued. This message suggests a bug in the fe driver, or a bug in the other part of the kernel, such as another device driver, breaking work space of the fe driver. It may be better to reboot the system as soon as possible, if the message is reported.

got a partial packet (%u bytes) to send An upper layer program passed a very short (shorter than an Ethernet header) packet to the device. It must be a bug in kernel network program.

got a big packet (%u bytes) to send An upper layer program passed a packet longer than what allowed in Etherenet specification to send. It must be a bug in kernel network program.

  Level 2 messages
The following messages, as well as level 0 and 1 messages, will be reported when FE_DEBUG option is set to 2.

if_fe.c ver. 0.8 / if_fereg.h ver. 0.8 It shows versions of the driver source files. This message is normal. Just ignore it.

strange TXBSIZ config; fixing The TXBSIZ (transmission buffer size) of the DLCR6 setting was not appropriate for the fe driver. The driver will automatically adjust the setting and keep working even after the message is reported. Double buffering is essential for fe driver to work properly, so it must be either 01, 10, or 11. This message is reported only when ‘flags 0x0080’ is set.

excessive collision (%d/%d) An excessive collision error was detected on the Ethernet. It is normal that the message is reported when the network is overloaded. If the message appears frequently, it may be an indication of the physical problem on the network cable. (The two numbers appended to the end of the message are only for debugging and should be ignored.)

received a big packet? (%u bytes) The MB86960A/MB86965A reported a receiving of a big packet. (A packet longer than the Ethernet limit.) This may be a bug in the driver, because these packets are usually thrown out by the chip.

received a partial packet? (%u bytes) The MB86960A/MB86965A reported a receiving of a very short packet. (A packet shorter than the Ethernet header.) This may be a bug in the driver, because these packets are usually ignored by the chip.

received a short packet? (%u bytes) The MB86960A/MB86965A reported a receiving of a short packet. ( A packet shorter than the Ethernet minimum, also known as a “runt”.) This may be a bug in the driver, because these packets are usually ignored by the chip.

no enough mbuf; a packet (%u bytes) dropped A kernel memory space called ‘mbuf’ was exhausted, and a received packet could not be processed. It is normal that the message is reported when the system is overloaded. If this message appears frequently, it may be an indication of a bug in the driver, or an inappropriate configuration of the kernel.

packet length mismatch? (%d/%d) The driver got a packet to send, enclosed in an mbuf, whose length information in the mbuf header and actual length of the packet data disagreed. This may be a bug in a kernel network program.

  Level 3 messages
More messages, as well as level 0, 1 and 2 messages, will be reported when FE_DEBUG option is set to 3. They are not documented, since they are for debugging purposes. See the driver source program for level 3 messages.

SEE ALSO
netstat(1), netintro(4), ed(4), ifconfig(8)

BUGS
Following are major known bugs.

Statistics on the number of collisions maintained by the fe driver may no be accurate: the option of netstat(1) sometimes shows slightly less value than true number of collisions.

More mbuf clusters are consumed than expected. The packet receive routine has an intended violation against the mbuf cluster allocation policy. The unnecessarily allocated clusters are freed within short lifetime, and it will not affect long term kernel memory usage.

AUTHOR, COPYRIGHT AND DISCLAIMER

The fe driver is written and contributed by M.S. <seki@sysrap.cs.fujitsu.co.jp>, following the ed driver written by David Greenman. This manual page is written by M.S.

All Rights Reserved, Copyright (C) Fujitsu Limited 1995

This document and the assosicated software may be used, modified, copied, distributed, and sold, in both source and binary form provided that the above copyright, these terms and the following disclaimer are retained. The name of the author and/or the contributor may not be used to endorse or promote products derived from this document and the associated software without specific prior written permission.

THIS DOCUMENT AND THE ASSOCIATED SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR AND THE CONTRIBUTOR “AS IS” AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR OR THE CONTRIBUTOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS DOCUMENT AND THE ASSOCIATED SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

HISTORY
The fe driver appeared in FreeBSD 2.1.