MAC and PHY loopback tests entrypoint for NIC controller

[Marius Strobl]

On Wed, Aug 17, 2011 at 05:13:39PM +0100, Ben Hutchings wrote:
> On Wed, 2011-08-17 at 17:42 +0200, Marius Strobl wrote:
> > On Sat, 6 Aug 2011 23:39:38 +0530
> > Naresh <gbal.naresh at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 
> > > 
> > > Hi All,
> > > 
> > > I am writing a 10Gb Ethernet driver. We have a requirement to support
> > > Mac and PHY loopback test for the network controller. In Linux there
> > > is a ethtool entrypoint which calls this feature.
> 
> Me too!
> 
> > > I wondering what will be the equivalent entry point in FreeBSD. I
> > > tried looking in to other drivers, but not lucky enough to find one.
> > > 
> > > It is much appreciated if some one could point me to MAC and PHY
> > > loopback test entry point in FreeBSD.
> > > 
> > 
> > I don't know what API Linux provides but I think the question is how to
> > activate loopback mode from userland.
> [...]
> 
> This is a very different thing.
> 
> On Linux, ethtool invokes a driver function that runs a set of driver-
> specific self-tests (synchronously).  There is a flag for whether the
> driver should run offline tests, in which case it will temporarily
> disconnect from the network stack and then (normally) select loopback
> mode, generate and validate packets.
> 

Ah, okay, unfortunately FreeBSD provides no standard interface for that.

Marius