Ubuntu Manpage: le — AMD Am7900 LANCE and Am79C9xx ILACC/PCnet Ethernet interface driver

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NAME

       le — AMD Am7900 LANCE and Am79C9xx ILACC/PCnet Ethernet interface driver

SYNOPSIS

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

             device le

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

             if_le_load="YES"

       For   C-Bus   non-PnP   adapters,  the  port  address  and  the  IRQ  number  have  to  be  specified  in
       /boot/device.hints:
       hint.le.0.at="isa"
       hint.le.0.port="0x03d0"
       hint.le.0.irq="6"

       For ISA non-PnP adapters, the port address as well as the IRQ and the DRQ numbers have to be specified in
       /boot/device.hints:
       hint.le.0.at="isa"
       hint.le.0.port="0x280"
       hint.le.0.irq="10"
       hint.le.0.drq="0"

DESCRIPTION

       The le driver provides support for  Ethernet  adapters  based  on  the  AMD  Am7990  and  Am79C90  (CMOS,
       pin-compatible) Local Area Network Controller for Ethernet (LANCE) chips.

       The  le  driver  also  supports  Ethernet  adapters  based  on  the  AMD  Am79C900  Integrated Local Area
       Communications Controller (ILACC) as well as the Am79C9xx PCnet family of chips,  which  are  single-chip
       implementations of a LANCE chip and a DMA engine.  This includes a superset of the PCI bus Ethernet chips
       supported  by  the  pcn(4)  driver.   The  le driver treats all of these PCI bus Ethernet chips as an AMD
       Am79C970 PCnet-PCI and does not support the additional features like the MII bus and burst  mode  of  AMD
       Am79C971 PCnet-FAST and greater chips.  Thus the pcn(4) driver should be preferred for the latter.

       Generally,  the  le  driver  aims at supporting as many different chips on as many different platforms as
       possible, partially at the cost of the best performance with some of these.

       The le driver supports reception and transmission of extended frames for vlan(4).  Selective reception of
       multicast Ethernet frames is provided by a 64-bit mask; multicast destination addresses are hashed  to  a
       bit entry using the Ethernet CRC function.

HARDWARE

   C-Bus and ISA
       The le driver supports C-Bus and ISA bus Ethernet adapters which are based on the following chips:

       •   AMD Am7990 and Am79C90 LANCE
       •   AMD Am79C960 PCnet-ISA
       •   AMD Am79C961 PCnet-ISA+
       •   AMD Am79C961A PCnet-ISA II

       This includes support for the following Ethernet adapters:

       C-Bus non-PnP:

       •   Contec C-NET(98)S

       ISA non-PnP:

       •   BICC Isolan
       •   Novell NE2100

       ISA PnP:

       •   AMD AM1500T/AM2100
       •   AMD PCnet-32
       •   AMD PCnet-ISA
       •   Allied Telesyn AT-1500
       •   Boca LANCard Combo
       •   Cabletron E2100 Series DNI
       •   Cabletron E2200 Single Chip
       •   Melco Inc. LGY-IV
       •   Novell NE2100
       •   Racal InterLan EtherBlaster

       The  le  driver  does not support the selection of media types and options via ifconfig(8) with C-Bus and
       ISA bus Ethernet adapters.

   PCI
       The PCI bus Ethernet chips supported by the le driver are:

       •   AMD Am53C974/Am79C970/Am79C974 PCnet-PCI
       •   AMD Am79C970A PCnet-PCI II
       •   AMD Am79C971 PCnet-FAST
       •   AMD Am79C972 PCnet-FAST+
       •   AMD Am79C973/Am79C975 PCnet-FAST III
       •   AMD Am79C976 PCnet-PRO
       •   AMD Am79C978 PCnet-Home

       This includes support for the following Ethernet adapters:

       •   AcerLAN NIC P20
       •   Allied Telesyn AT-2450 and AT-2700 series
       •   VMware emulated AMD Am79C970A PCnet-PCI II interface

       The le driver supports the selection of the following media types via ifconfig(8) with PCI  bus  Ethernet
       adapters:

       autoselect   Enable autoselection of the media type.

       10baseT/UTP  Select UTP media.

       10base5/AUI  Select AUI/BNC media.

       The following media option is supported with these media types:

       full-duplex  Select full duplex operation.

       Note  that  unlike  the  pcn(4)  driver, the le driver does not support selecting 100Mbps (Fast Ethernet)
       media types.

   sparc64
       The le driver supports the on-board LANCE interfaces found in Sun Ultra 1 machines.  The le driver allows
       the selection of the following media types via ifconfig(8) with these on-board interfaces:

       autoselect   Enable autoselection of the media type.

       10baseT/UTP  Select UTP media.

       10base5/AUI  Select AUI media.

       When using autoselection, a default media type is selected for use by examining all  ports  for  carrier.
       The  first  media  type  with  which a carrier is detected will be selected.  Additionally, if carrier is
       dropped on a port, the driver will switch between the possible ports until one with carrier is found.

       The le driver also supports the following Sun SBus Ethernet add-on adapters:

       •   SCSI HBA and Buffered Ethernet (SBE/S, P/N 501-1869)
       •   Fast SCSI and Buffered Ethernet (FSBE/S, P/N 501-2015 and 501-2981)

       The le driver does not support the selection of  media  types  and  options  via  ifconfig(8)  with  SBus
       Ethernet add-on adapters.

       For further information on configuring media types and options, see ifconfig(8).

DIAGNOSTICS

le%d: overflow More packets came in from the Ethernet than there was space in the LANCE receive buffers.
Packets were missed.

le%d: receive buffer error The LANCE ran out of buffer space, packet dropped.

le%d: lost carrier The Ethernet carrier disappeared during an attempt to transmit. The LANCE will
finish transmitting the current packet, but will not automatically retry transmission if there is a
collision.

le%d: excessive collisions, tdr %d The Ethernet was extremely busy or jammed, outbound packets were
dropped after 16 attempts to retransmit.

TDR is the abbreviation of "Time Domain Reflectometry". The optionally reported TDR value is an internal
counter of the interval between the start of a transmission and the occurrence of a collision. This
value can be used to determine the distance from the Ethernet tap to the point on the Ethernet cable that
is shorted or open (unterminated).

le%d: dropping chained buffer A packet did not fit into a single receive buffer and was dropped. Since
the le driver allocates buffers large enough to receive maximum sized Ethernet packets, this means some
other station on the LAN transmitted a packet larger than allowed by the Ethernet standard.

le%d: transmit buffer error The LANCE ran out of buffer space before finishing the transmission of a
packet. If this error occurs, the driver software has a bug.

le%d: underflow The LANCE ran out of buffer space before finishing the transmission of a packet. If
this error occurs, the driver software has a bug.

le%d: controller failed to initialize Driver failed to start the LANCE. This is potentially a hardware
failure.

le%d: memory error RAM failed to respond within the timeout when the LANCE wanted to read or write it.
This is potentially a hardware failure.

le%d: receiver disabled The receiver of the LANCE was turned off due to an error.

le%d: transmitter disabled The transmitter of the LANCE was turned off due to an error.

HISTORY

       The  le  driver was ported from NetBSD and first appeared in FreeBSD 6.1.  The NetBSD version in turn was
       derived from the le driver which first appeared in 4.4BSD.

AUTHORS

       The le driver was ported by Marius Strobl <marius@FreeBSD.org>.

Debian                                          January 20, 2007                                           LE(4)