1 .\" Copyright (c) 1997, 1998
2 .\" Bill Paul <wpaul@ctr.columbia.edu>. All rights reserved.
4 .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
5 .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
7 .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
8 .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
9 .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
10 .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
11 .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
12 .\" 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software
13 .\" must display the following acknowledgement:
14 .\" This product includes software developed by Bill Paul.
15 .\" 4. Neither the name of the author nor the names of any co-contributors
16 .\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software
17 .\" without specific prior written permission.
19 .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY Bill Paul AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND
20 .\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE
21 .\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
22 .\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL Bill Paul OR THE VOICES IN HIS HEAD
23 .\" BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR
24 .\" CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF
25 .\" SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS
26 .\" INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN
27 .\" CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE)
28 .\" ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF
29 .\" THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
31 .\" $FreeBSD: src/share/man/man4/rl.4,v 1.15.2.8 2003/02/17 21:20:39 trhodes Exp $
32 .\" $DragonFly: src/share/man/man4/rl.4,v 1.6 2007/03/11 10:22:52 swildner Exp $
39 .Nd RealTek 8129/8139 fast ethernet device driver
46 driver provides support for PCI ethernet adapters and embedded
47 controllers based on the RealTek 8129 and 8139 fast ethernet controller
49 This includes the Allied Telesyn AT2550, Farallon NetLINE 10/100 PCI,
51 NDC Communications NE100TX-E, OvisLink LEF-8129TX, OvisLink LEF-8139TX,
52 Netronix Inc. EA-1210 NetEther 10/100, KTX-9130TX 10/100 Fast Ethernet,
53 Encore ENL832-TX 10/100 M PCI, Longshine LCS-8038TX-R, the
54 SMC EZ Card 10/100 PCI 1211-TX, and various other cheap adapters.
55 It also supports the Accton EN1207D which has a
56 chip labeled MPX5030 (or MPX5038) which appears to be a RealTek workalike.
58 The RealTek controllers use bus master DMA but do not use a
59 descriptor-based data transfer mechanism.
61 single fixed size ring buffer from which packets must be copied
63 For transmission, there are only four outbound packet
64 address registers which require all outgoing packets to be stored
65 as contiguous buffers.
66 Furthermore, outbound packet buffers must
67 be longword aligned or else transmission will fail.
69 The 8129 differs from the 8139 in that the 8139 has an internal
70 PHY which is controlled through special direct access registers
71 whereas the 8129 uses an external PHY via an MII bus.
73 supports both 10 and 100Mbps speeds in either full or half duplex.
74 The 8129 can support the same speeds and modes given an appropriate
79 driver supports the following media types:
81 .Bl -tag -width xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
83 Enable autoselection of the media type and options.
85 supported if the PHY chip attached to the RealTek controller
86 supports NWAY autonegotiation.
87 The user can manually override
88 the autoselected mode by adding media options to the
95 option can also be used to select either
101 Set 100Mbps (fast ethernet) operation.
104 option can also be used to select either
113 driver supports the following media options:
115 .Bl -tag -width xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
117 Force full duplex operation
119 Force half duplex operation.
122 Note that the 100baseTX media type is only available if supported
124 For more information on configuring this device, see
128 .It "rl%d: couldn't map memory"
129 A fatal initialization error has occurred.
130 .It "rl%d: couldn't map interrupt"
131 A fatal initialization error has occurred.
132 .It "rl%d: watchdog timeout"
133 The device has stopped responding to the network, or there is a problem with
134 the network connection (cable).
135 .It "rl%d: no memory for rx list"
136 The driver failed to allocate an mbuf for the receiver ring.
137 .It "rl%d: no memory for tx list"
138 The driver failed to allocate an mbuf for the transmitter ring when
139 allocating a pad buffer or collapsing an mbuf chain into a cluster.
140 .It "rl%d: chip is in D3 power state -- setting to D0"
141 This message applies only to adapters which support power
143 Some operating systems place the controller in low power
144 mode when shutting down, and some PCI BIOSes fail to bring the chip
145 out of this state before configuring it.
146 The controller loses all of
147 its PCI configuration in the D3 state, so if the BIOS does not set
148 it back to full power mode in time, it won't be able to configure it
150 The driver tries to detect this condition and bring
151 the adapter back to the D0 (full power) state, but this may not be
152 enough to return the driver to a fully operational condition.
154 you see this message at boot time and the driver fails to attach
155 the device as a network interface, you will have to perform second
156 warm boot to have the device properly configured.
158 Note that this condition only occurs when warm booting from another
160 If you power down your system prior to booting
162 the card should be configured correctly.
173 .%B The RealTek 8129 and 8139 datasheets
174 .%O ftp.realtek.com.tw:/lancard/data sheet
179 device driver first appeared in
184 driver was written by
185 .An Bill Paul Aq wpaul@ctr.columbia.edu .
187 Since outbound packets must be longword aligned, the transmit
188 routine has to copy an unaligned packet into an mbuf cluster buffer
190 The driver abuses the fact that the cluster buffer
191 pool is allocated at system startup time in a contiguous region starting
193 Since cluster buffers are 2048 bytes, they are
194 longword aligned by definition.
195 The driver probably should not be
196 depending on this characteristic.
198 The RealTek data sheets are of especially poor quality,
199 and there is a lot of information missing
200 particularly concerning the receiver operation.
202 important fact that the data sheets fail to mention relates to the
203 way in which the chip fills in the receive buffer.
205 is posted to signal that a frame has been received, it is possible that
206 another frame might be in the process of being copied into the receive
207 buffer while the driver is busy handling the first one.
209 manages to finish processing the first frame before the chip is done
210 DMAing the rest of the next frame, the driver may attempt to process
211 the next frame in the buffer before the chip has had a chance to finish
214 The driver can check for an incomplete frame by inspecting the frame
215 length in the header preceding the actual packet data: an incomplete
216 frame will have the magic length of 0xFFF0.
217 When the driver encounters
218 this value, it knows that it has finished processing all currently
220 Neither this magic value nor its significance are
221 documented anywhere in the RealTek data sheets.