Whither ep(4) on 9.3-RELEASE?

[John-Mark Gurney]

Ian Smith wrote this message on Tue, Nov 11, 2014 at 21:31 +1100:
> In a conversation on questions@ re natd(8), Gary said he was about to 
> upgrade to 9.3 from some (embarrassingly :) old version, and I said:
> 
>  >> Strangely, there's no man page for ep nor if_ep on 8.x or 9.x?
> 
> To which Gary replied:
> 
>  > ugh.  That will be interesting when my upgrade starts in a few days.  
>  > Dang.
>  > man ep
>  > ep -- Ethernet driver for 3Com Etherlink III (3c5x9) interfaces
> 
> Firstly, I was wrong about 8.x, maybe I'd been looking for 'man if_ep'.  
> On 8.2-R (i386) there is an ep(4) and:
> 
> smithi on t23% ll /boot/kernel/*ep.ko* | grep -v wlan
> -r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel   28687 Jul  8  2011 /boot/kernel/if_ep.ko
> -r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  104779 Jul  8  2011 /boot/kernel/if_ep.ko.symbols
> 
> But on 9.3-R (well, 9.3-PRERELEASE of June 25th, amd64):
> 
> smithi at x200:/sys/dev/acpica % ll /boot/kernel/*ep*
> -r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel   24488 Jun 25 15:45 /boot/kernel/if_epair.ko*
> -r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel   73912 Jun 25 15:45 /boot/kernel/if_epair.ko.symbols*
> -r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel   16584 Jun 25 15:45 /boot/kernel/uep.ko*
> -r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel   51056 Jun 25 15:45 /boot/kernel/uep.ko.symbols*
> -r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel   24472 Jun 25 15:46 /boot/kernel/wlan_wep.ko*
> -r-xr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  113632 Jun 25 15:46 /boot/kernel/wlan_wep.ko.symbols*
> 
> Moreover,
> 
> a) http://www.freebsd.org/releases/9.3R/hardware.html does list ep(4) 
> for the 3C5x9, as does 8.2R/hardware.html, for [i386,pc98,amd64]
> 
> b) But in these and any other versions back to 7.4-stable, there is no 
> ep(All sections), nor if_ep, at http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi
> 
> Ah, hang on .. finally found it, under 9.3-R and older releases, but 
> only if not leaving 'Default' as architecture, but only specifically 
> when choosing 'i386' (which seems weird) though the hardware list (and 
> ep(4) under i386) for 9.3R says:
> 
> [i386,pc98,amd64] The ep(4) driver supports Ethernet adapters based on 
> the 3Com 3C5x9 Etherlink III Parallel Tasking chipset, including:
> 
> Further, hardware.html for 10.0R, 10.0-stable and even 10.1-stable all 
> show ep(4) for i386 only .. but NOT for 10.1R, even when choosing i386?
> 
> So maybe this is only a doc error?  My 9.3 above is amd64, so apparently 
> ep(4) was not (ever?) supported under amd64, and pc98 is gone now, eh?
> 
> So can anyone confirm that ep(4) is present on 9.3-R, even if only i386?

Yeh, it looks like ep is in GENERIC on i386..  We also compile ep on
amd64 too, though not sure anyone would ever want to use ep on there...

On HEAD we only compile the ep modules on i386...  so not sure why you
weren't able to find it...

I'd just try booting a memstick or other image to confirm that there
is support...

-- 
  John-Mark Gurney				Voice: +1 415 225 5579

     "All that I will do, has been done, All that I have, has not."