ale0 gets no carrier

[Pyun YongHyeon]

On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 09:18:15PM +0200, Milan Obuch wrote:
> On Thursday 22 October 2009 21:05:39 Mike Tancsa wrote:
> > At 02:22 PM 10/22/2009, Marius N?nnerich wrote:
> > >Hi Pyun, all,
> > >
> > >today I installed FreeBSD 8-STABLE r198366 on a new Box. It has a Atheros
> > > nic: ale0 at pci0:2:0:0:        class=0x020000 card=0x831c1043
> > > chip=0x10261969 rev=0xb0 hdr=0x00
> > >     vendor     = 'Attansic (Now owned by Atheros)'
> > >     device     = 'PCI-E ETHERNET CONTROLLER  (AR8121/AR8113 )'
> > >     class      = network
> > >     subclass   = ethernet
> > >
> > >ale0: flags=8802<BROADCAST,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
> > >
> > >options=319a<TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM,TSO4,WOL_MCAST,WOL
> > >_MAGIC> ether 00:24:8c:a4:0a:b3
> > >         media: Ethernet autoselect (none)
> > >         status: no carrier
> > >
> > >The nic gets no carrier at all. I tried against two known-working nics
> > >with a cross-over cable and against a dsl-modem.
> > >Any idea what to try? Will happily test patches.
> >
> > Did you try and give it an IP address so that its
> > "UP" ? Some nics dont seem to have carrier until
> > you put it in UP state with an IP. Try something simple like
> > ifconfig ale0 192.168.255.254/30
> >
> 
> In my case
> 
> ale0 at pci0:2:0:0:        class=0x020000 card=0x831c1043 chip=0x10261969 
> rev=0xb0 hdr=0x00
>     vendor     = 'Attansic (Now owned by Atheros)'
>     device     = 'PCI-E ETHERNET CONTROLLER  (AR8121/AR8113 )'
>     class      = network
>     subclass   = ethernet
> 
> (exactly the same, as I can see) when configuring interface manually, I need 
> to do 'ifconfig ale0 up' before I can successfully acquire IP with 'dhclient 
> ale0'. Everything works normally with 'ifconfig_ale0="DHCP"' line 
> in /etc/rc.conf.
> 

This is intended behavior as establishing a link requires
negotiation with link-partner and the link state could be changed
after the negotiation. So showing (fake/incorrect) link state
before UPing the interface wouldn't be correct behavior.