re(4) and half-duplex -- FreeBSD 5.4-RC4

[fandino]

Hello,

  I was trying to connect a FreeBSD box with an integrated realtek network card
to a hub but the re driver is unable to set the card in half-duplex:

# ifconfig re0 inet 10.20.30.40 netmask 255.255.255.0 mtu 1492 media 10baseT/UTP mediaopt half-duplex up
ifconfig: SIOCSIFMEDIA (mediaopt): Device not configured
#
# ifconfig re0 inet 10.20.30.40 netmask 255.255.255.0 mtu 1492 media 10baseT/UTP mediaopt full-duplex up
#

however, the man page for this driver states that both modes are supported:

[....]
The re driver supports the following media options:

      full-duplex  Force full duplex operation.

      half-duplex  Force half duplex operation.

[....]

because this I have a lot of collisions in the hub port.

I think either the re driver is unable to manage half-duplex on this chip or
simply the man page is wrong.

Regards.

     /-----/

re0: <RealTek 8169S Single-chip Gigabit Ethernet> port 0x8c00-0x8cff mem 0xe1006000-0xe10060ff irq 16 at device 11.0 on pci1
miibus0: <MII bus> on re0
rgephy0: <RTL8169S/8110S media interface> on miibus0
rgephy0:  10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, 100baseTX, 100baseTX-FDX, 1000baseTX, 1000baseTX-FDX, auto
re0: Ethernet address: 00:0d:61:78:cf:2f