Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2001 03:31:53 +0200 From: "Karsten W. Rohrbach" <karsten@rohrbach.de> To: Bert Driehuis <driehuis@playbeing.org> Cc: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Network performance question Message-ID: <20010402033153.F75063@mail.webmonster.de> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSI.4.21.0104020242170.4679-100000@c1111.nl.compuware.com>; from driehuis@playbeing.org on Mon, Apr 02, 2001 at 02:57:40AM %2B0200 References: <20010402023800.B75063@mail.webmonster.de> <Pine.BSI.4.21.0104020242170.4679-100000@c1111.nl.compuware.com>
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Bert Driehuis(driehuis@playbeing.org)@2001.04.02 02:57:40 +0000:
> I'm glad you mentioned the i82559 chip as an approved one, because I'm
> currently dealing with a vendor that happened to miswire them, and broke
> 100/full autonegociation by doing so.
>
ouch!
well, having been network and unix admin for several years now, i try to
avoid nbase autonegotation everywhere i can. nway defines a new severity
level for the word "evil" hehe ;-) maybe, i sometimes think, nway means
it works in one way but not in the other - anyway my interfaces are
mostly nailed 100tx/fd
> I'm not a big Linux fan, but if it does the job on a machine that
> FreeBSD throws its hands up on, what am I to recommend? Buy new
> hardware?
taking the example with nway - how do you switch off nway in a linux
driver module for the 82559? :-) evil grinning donald becker gave us
eepro100-diag.c libflash.c libmii.c pci-config.c and last but not least
mii-diag.c. you got to compile all that pile of crap with specialized
interface to the eepro100 driver and then run
mii-diag -F 100baseTx-FD eth0
to nail your interfaces, ifconfig does nothing alike. you can also load
the driver with very strange options on the lilo command line but
anyway...
i run linux on a lot of pathetic hardware freebsd does not like.
ftp2.de.freebsd.org is a linux box.
it runs. no questions asked ;-)
>
> I've been through this loop often enough to recommend top notch hardware
> from vendors that actually can tell a 100pF capacitor from a 100uF one
> (which is apparently what broke those Intel based boards), but if a
> workaround exists that doesn't jeopardize the users of Decent Hardware,
> let a thousand workarounds blossom!
sure, but it makes a difference if a driver implementor just adds a
quick hack [tm] which lateron appears to be evil to the rest of the
system or if he uses his brain and creates quirk structures for that.
and that's a thing i certainly like about freebsd.
>
> If life were easy, we'd all be out of a job. I'd far rather concentrate
> on getting stuff to work than on bashing the competitor for bashings
> sake.
no, you got me wrong - i am definately not a linux vs freebsd vs
restoftheworld guy ;-) i just prefer the better code, or at least the
code that looks better and more logical to me.
>
> {Free,Net}BSD have the edge in driver development for having a clear,
> bus-agnostic driver development model. I never stop being amazed at how
> cleanly most hardware bugs can be worked around if the basics are taken
> care of.
*sigh* there should be more developers in the community (be it *bsd,
linux or whatever free u-name-it os) that think twice about the legacy
code they invent ;-)
in fact, that's why i never again will do real driver work since it
takes 3 or more other guys to fix up my code afterwards :-/
cheers,
/k
--
> Hackers do it with all sorts of characters.
KR433/KR11-RIPE -- http://www.webmonster.de -- ftp://ftp.webmonster.de
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