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Date:      Thu, 29 Jan 2004 21:27:16 -0800
From:      Saint Aardvark the Carpeted <aardvark@saintaardvarkthecarpeted.com>
To:        Lee Slaughter <lee@slaughters.com>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: kernel probe of NICs
Message-ID:  <20040130052715.GV3224@hardesty.saintaardvarkthecarpeted.com>
In-Reply-To: <200401300340.TAA01625@badboy.spawar.navy.mil>
References:  <200401300340.TAA01625@badboy.spawar.navy.mil>

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lees@badboy.spawar.navy.mil disturbed my sleep to write:
> i've installed one machine no problems but on another a suspect
> ethernet interface has developed.  It's an Asus p4p800 motherboard
> with 3C940 on the board.  (i'm suspect of this much integration)
> At first, messing with Debian and Suse, the card worked fine.
> When i sent to  installing FreeBSD no card was detected
> by sysinstall->Configure->Networking->Interfaces.
> Shouldn't it show up there?
> ifconfig doesn't see it.
> (i don't know how else to look for it)

Disclaimer:  I haven't worked with 5.1 yet, but I have got FreeBSD to
work with this motherboard and the 3c940.  Also, I'm assuming that
you've tried all this *after* installing FreeBSD, and you're not just
doing this all from the install process.

First of all, you can list all the interfaces FreeBSD has detected by
running "ifconfig -a".  The driver for the 3c940 is the sk(4) driver,
which means that if it's been detected you'll see something like:

	sk0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500

If you see that, you've got it made.

If not, there's another couple things to try.  First, if you haven't
compiled your own kernel yet, you may have the sk driver around as a
loadable kernel module.  See if "ls /modules/*sk*" shows anything;
if you see something like "if_sk.ko", try "kldload if_sk" and then
"ifconfig -a" to see if it has shown up.

Another thing to try is compiling your own kernel.  Instructions can be
found in the handbook
(http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/kernelconfig.html);
you'll want to include the sk device and whatever else it may need.

One final note:  this driver has had problems up until recently with
promiscuous mode, which among other things means problems picking up an
IP address by DHCP.  I had to grab the very latest code in order to get
it working; this is a fair amount of trouble, and you may want to
consider another card until the new driver makes it to a FreeBSD
release.
 
> I plugged in another reportedly good ethernet card into a 
> PCI slot and no kernel probe detection there either, 
> but do get a green (carrier ?) light, 
> but no green light  on the motherboard NIC.

What model of ethernet card?  Again, try "ifconfig -a" to see what
shows up.  This will show you a lot of interfaces like "lo0" or
"xl1"; if you chop off the number and look at the man pages (ie, "man
xl"), you'll see what the device is.  With luck, one of them will be
your PCI card.

Let me know what happens, and good luck

Hugh

-- 
Saint Aardvark the Carpeted
aardvark@saintaardvarkthecarpeted.com
Because the plural of Anecdote is Myth.



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