NAME

       sf — Adaptec AIC-6915 "Starfire" PCI Fast Ethernet adapter driver

SYNOPSIS

       To compile this driver into the kernel, place the following lines in your kernel configuration file:

             device miibus
             device sf

       Alternatively, to load the driver as a module at boot time, place the following line in loader.conf(5):

             if_sf_load="YES"

DESCRIPTION

       The  sf driver provides support for Adaptec Duralink Fast Ethernet adapters based on the Adaptec AIC-6915
       "Starfire" chipset.

       The AIC-6915 is a bus master controller with an  MII  interface.   It  supports  high  and  low  priority
       transmit  and  receive  queues, TCP/IP checksum offload, multiple DMA descriptor formats and both polling
       and producer/consumer DMA models.  The AIC-6915 receive filtering options  include  a  16  entry  perfect
       filter,  a 512-bit hash table for multicast addresses, a 512-bit hash table for priority address matching
       and VLAN filtering.  An external MII-compliant transceiver is required for media interfacing.

       Multiport adapters consist of several AIC-6915 controllers connected via  a  PCI  to  PCI  bridge.   Each
       controller is treated as a separate interface by the sf driver.

       The sf driver supports the following media types:

       autoselect            Enable autoselection of the media type and options.  The user can manually override
                             the autoselected mode by adding media options to the /etc/rc.conf file.

       10baseT/UTP           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 sf driver supports the following media options:

       full-duplex           Force full duplex operation

       half-duplex           Force half duplex operation.

       For more information on configuring this device, see ifconfig(8).

HARDWARE

       Adapters supported by the sf driver include:

       •   ANA-62011 64-bit single port 10/100baseTX adapter
       •   ANA-62022 64-bit dual port 10/100baseTX adapter
       •   ANA-62044 64-bit quad port 10/100baseTX adapter
       •   ANA-69011 32-bit single port 10/100baseTX adapter
       •   ANA-62020 64-bit single port 100baseFX adapter

SYSCTL VARIABLES

       The following variables are available as both sysctl(8) variables and loader(8) tunables:

       dev.sf.%d.int_mod
               Maximum  amount of time to delay interrupt processing in units of 102.4us.  The accepted range is
               0 to 31, the default value is 1 (102.4us).  Value 0 completely disables the interrupt moderation.
               The interface does not need to be brought down and up again before a change takes effect.

       dev.sf.%d.stats
               Display lots of useful MAC counters maintained in the driver.

DIAGNOSTICS

       sf%d: couldn't map memory  A fatal initialization error has occurred.  This may happen if  the  PCI  BIOS
       not  configured  the  device,  which  may  be  because the BIOS has been configured for a "Plug and Play"
       operating system.  The "Plug and Play OS" setting in the BIOS should be set to "no" or "off" in order for
       PCI devices to work properly with FreeBSD.

       sf%d: couldn't map ports  A fatal initialization error has occurred.  This may happen if the PCI BIOS not
       configured the device, which may be because the BIOS has been configured for a "Plug and Play"  operating
       system.   The  "Plug  and  Play  OS"  setting in the BIOS should be set to "no" or "off" in order for PCI
       devices to work properly with FreeBSD.

       sf%d: couldn't map interrupt  A fatal initialization error has occurred.

       sf%d: no memory for softc struct!    The  driver  failed  to  allocate  memory  for  per-device  instance
       information during initialization.

       sf%d:  failed to enable I/O ports/memory mapping!  The driver failed to initialize PCI I/O port or shared
       memory access.  This might happen if the card is not in a bus-master slot.

       sf%d: watchdog timeout  The device has stopped responding to the network, or there is a problem with  the
       network connection (cable).

SEE ALSO

       altq(4), arp(4), miibus(4), netintro(4), ng_ether(4), polling(4), vlan(4), ifconfig(8)

       The Adaptec AIC-6915 Programmer's Manual, http://download.adaptec.com/pdfs/user_guides/aic6915_pg.pdf.

HISTORY

       The sf device driver first appeared in FreeBSD 3.0.

AUTHORS

       The sf driver was written by Bill Paul <wpaul@ctr.columbia.edu>.

Debian                                          January 21, 2008                                           SF(4)