FreeBSD-5.2 BETA & Davicom ethernet

[Maxime Henrion]

Marius Strobl wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 02, 2003 at 05:33:19PM +0100, Maxime Henrion wrote:
> > Marius Strobl wrote:
> > > On Tue, Dec 02, 2003 at 04:21:16PM +0100, Maxime Henrion wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > This is expected for now.  I coudln't find the time to add support for
> > > > getting the MAC address from the OpenFirmware in dc(4) yet.  With a bit
> > > > of luck, this will be working soon, though probably not before
> > > > 5.3-RELEASE, unless someone else tackles this issue.
> > > > 
> > > 
> > > A while ago I already sent you a patch similar to the attached one which
> > > gets the MAC address for Sun onboard NICs via OpenFirmware in dc(4). But
> > > you didn't like the MD ifdefs in if_dc.c and wanted to implement it some
> > > layers above.
> > 
> > Yes, I remember it.  But as I said, it's an ugly hack, and needs to be
> > done better.  If people really need a MAC address they could use an
> > "ifconfig dc0 ether xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx" command.  Besides, there have
> 
> I agree that this is not the best way to do it, on the other hand what
> did you have in mind when you wrote "via OpenFirmware in dc(4)"?

My formulation wasn't appropriate, I didn't mean that I intend to add
that code to dc(4) itself.

> One could leave the check for local-mac-address out for now and just
> call OF_getetheraddr(), dc(4) then should compile as a module and
> people would get a working MAC address, also the same on all interfaces,
> until the proper way is implemented.
> 
> > been reports of crashes with dc(4) cards under sparc64 at high load.  So
> > I'm really reluctant to commit this.  Which makes me wonder : do you
> > experience these crashes?
> 
> No. When they were reported shortly after you commited the busdma
> conversion of dc(4) I tried to reproduce them by transfering large
> files and running buildworld via NFS but had no problems.
> As a side note, from the reports I read it was never clear to me if
> those crashes happend with onboard Davicom NICs or with other dc(4)
> NICs. There now also seem to be several people that use onboard
> Davicom NICs with FreeBSD/sparc64 and there where no new reports of
> such crashes. In if_dc.c revision 1.122 and 1.123 mbr@ fixed a
> Davicom-related bug, maybe it was also the cause for those crashes.

That's definitely good news.  The reports I had about crashes were with
other dc(4) NICs plugged into a PCI slot, not with onboard Davicom NICs
if I remember correctly, but I could be wrong.  This changes the deal
quite a bit, it may make sense to add this code so that users of Sun
boxes with integrated Davicom cards are happy with 5.2-RELEASE.  I was
reluctant because I thought the problem was with all cards.  I'll talk
to re@ about that.

Cheers,
Maxime