Network Card problems in FreeBSD 4.9

[Oliver Fromme]

Hi,

Nobody has answered to this so far, so I give it a try.

First of all, FreeBSD 4.9 is pretty old.  It's possible
that it doesn't support your NICs (network interface cards)
properly.  At the very least, you should update to 4-stable
(RELENG_4).  But the official support for the FreeBSD 4
series ends at the end of January 2007, which means that
you won't get security patches anymore.

Therefore I recommend that you update to FreeBSD 6.  The
latest release is 6.1, but 6.2 is currently in the works
and is scheduled to be released in about 6 weeks.

Steph wrote:
 > I've recompiled my kernel since I needed to add a new Driver for some
 > bandwidth management software I'm running and for some reason when I
 > reboot the box with the new kernel it doesn't show my Network Interfaces
 > when doing an ifconfig -a. 
 >  
 > The one device is a Dual Intel Pro/1000 Adaptor and the other is a Dual
 > Broadcom I think. I've compiled the drivers for these devices directly
 > into the kernel without any errors. They do show up when doing a pciconf
 > -lv. I'm new to FreeBSD so the chances that I've screwed something up
 > somewhere is quite good :-) Is there anything else I should be looking
 > out for?

If everything else fails, you can simply try loading the
various NIC drivers (kernel modules), one after another,
and watch dmesg (console output) for any messages.  If
one of the drivers attaches, then you know which driver
you need.  :-)

On FreeBSD 4.x, the kernel modules are located in /modules,
and on FreeBSD 5.x/6.x they're in /boot/kernel.  The NIC
drivers alls start with "if_", so the following command
will list all of them:

# ls /modules/if_*              # FreeBSD 4.x
# ls /boot/kernel/if_*          # FreeBSD 5.x/6.x

To load a module, use this command (as root, of course):

# kldload if_bge

That will load the "bge" driver (for Broadcom gigabit NICs).
You can remove unneeded modules with kldunload, and list
all currently loaded modules with kldstat.  Please refer
to their manual pages for details.

Note that every NIC driver has a manual page, which lists
all chips that are supported.  For example, look at the
bge manual page.

Another possibility is to compile a new kernel which has
all of the NIC drivers statically included.  Then reboot
and check which of the drivers attached to your NICs.
Then remove all the others from their kernel (or just
keep them, unless you're concerned about wasting some RAM).

 > none3 at pci2:1:0: class=0x020000 card=0x00291374 chip=0x00291374
 > none4 at pci2:1:1: class=0x020000 card=0x00291374 chip=0x00291374

That doesn't look like an intel adaptor.  You can lookup
the chip ID here:  http://pci-ids.ucw.cz/iii/?i=1374
It lists the device as "Silicom Dual port Copper Giga
Ethernet 546GB Bypass Server Adapter".  To be honest,
I have never heard of such a thing before, and I think
it is not supported by FreeBSD.  (Someone please correct
me if I'm wrong.)

 > none5 at pci4:0:0: class=0x020000 card=0x02c615d9 chip=0x165914e4
 > none6 at pci5:0:0: class=0x020000 card=0x02c615d9 chip=0x165914e4

That's the "NetXtreme BCM5721 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express".
The last four characters of the "chip" ID are the vendor code
(in this case, 14e4 is Broadcom) and the preceding four
characters are the model code (here: 1659).  See this page:

http://pci-ids.ucw.cz/iii/?i=14e4

In FreeBSD 6, the bge(4) manual page says that the BCM5721
is supported by this driver.  However, I'm not sure that
4.9 supports it, because it's very old.  You probably must
update to a more recent version of FreeBSD.

Best regards
   Oliver

-- 
Oliver Fromme,  secnetix GmbH & Co. KG, Marktplatz 29, 85567 Grafing
Dienstleistungen mit Schwerpunkt FreeBSD: http://www.secnetix.de/bsd
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and may not necessarily reflect the opinions of secnetix in any way.

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