nve driver clarifications with 6.2-RELEASE

Garrett Cooper youshi10 at u.washington.edu
Fri Jun 22 15:09:19 UTC 2007


Matthew Bloch wrote:
> Hi there, I'm a Linux expert, FreeBSD novice trying to get a FreeBSD
> bootstrap together for our network and am stuck because nForce network
> chips are a pain in the backside :)
>
> I wonder if anyone can confirm what I've found and suggest an easier way
> forward:
>
> Basically I can install 6.2-RELEASE off a CD-ROM in the office but there
> is no nve0 device on this particular Gigabyte m61pm-S2 board - based on
> similar experience with the Linux forcedeth driver, I assume that we
> just need a newer driver.  However I understand that the nve driver is a
> dead-end and that the nfe driver will replace it from 7.0.
>
> So in order to use this on our bootstrap system, I will need to rebuild
> the kernel, taking nve out and compiling nfe (with the relevant PHY
> patch) in.  Is that about the quickest way to fix this?  I'd be very
> interested to know if anyone could suggest a solution that didn't
> involve rebuilding the kernel.
>
> Thanks for any tips...
>
>   
nfe exists, but you need to grab your sources _prior_ to booting up for 
the first time (can retrieve them by adding the source distributions), 
because the RELEASE kernel doesn't have the nfe driver, even though the 
STABLE and CURRENT snapshot ISO ones do.

-Garrett


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