nfe driver 6.2 stable

[Chris]

On 24/09/2007, Jeremy Chadwick <koitsu at freebsd.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 24, 2007 at 12:57:23AM +0100, Chris wrote:
> > nfe0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
> >         options=8<VLAN_MTU>
> >         inet x.x.x.x netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast x.x.x.x
> >         inet x.x.x.x netmask 0xffffffff broadcast x.x.x.x
> >         ether x
> >         media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseTX <full-duplex>)
> >         status: active
> >
> > 1 - is there a man page for nfe anywhere?
>
> Closest thing I can find would be the manpage from -CURRENT's nfe(4),
> which is supposedly the same code.
>
> http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=nfe&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=FreeBSD+7-current&format=html
>
> > 2 - does it support hardware checksum I remember reading it does but
> > from ifconfig output it appears to not be in use so if it does support
> > it how do I enable it?
>
> It does support it, but I don't know the circumstances surrounding when
> it gets enabled.  That is to say, it's known that some versions of the
> chip (and/or associated PHY) have bugs, so possibly hardware checksum
> offloading is known to be broken on the system you're on.  Taken from my
> 7-CURRENT box at home (Asus A8N-E, nForce 4-based):
>
> nfe0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
>        options=10b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,TSO4>
>        ether 00:15:f2:17:30:e9
>        inet 192.168.1.51 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255
>        media: Ethernet 1000baseTX <full-duplex>
>        status: active
>
> I do not explicitly specify rxcsum or txcsum in my rc.conf ifconfig
> line.
>
> > 3 - same with TOS?
>
> TOS (type-of-service) or TSO?  If TSO, see above ifconfig.
>
> > 4 - how do I enable jumbo frames if it supports it?
>
> You should take a bit more itme to read the webpage you obtained the
> driver from.  I see these on the page:
>
> 2007/01/06      Added jumbo frame support. [...] Fixed a bug to handle
>                Tx/Rx checksum offload settings with ifconfig.
> 2006/08/11      Added support for jumbo frame capability.
>
> yongari@ (Pyun YongHyeon) should be able to provide additional help
> with both.
>
> > 5 - is it safe to use with zero copy sockets?
>
> No idea.
>
> > 6 - I currently have both net.isr.direct and mpsafenet disabled is
> > this driver safe to use on them?
>
> No idea.
>
> --
> | Jeremy Chadwick                                    jdc at parodius.com |
> | Parodius Networking                           http://www.parodius.com/ |
> | UNIX Systems Administrator                      Mountain View, CA, USA |
> | Making life hard for others since 1977.                  PGP: 4BD6C0CB |
>
>

Thanks yes I meant TSO sorry, I would guess with the checksum either
the 6.x driver is older and not fully implemented yet, the 6.x driver
does need more patches for certian chipsets so would indicate its
older then the CURRENT driver.  Or as you said my chipset is known to
be unstable with the hardware checksums.

The card is more stable when using nve driver no crashes still but the
performance is around the same maxing out at around 200mbit.  I was
expecting nearer 400-500mbit.

e1000phy0: <Marvell 88E1116 Gigabit PHY> on miibus0

Is the line from dmesg, I believe in CURRENT mpsafe is always on
regardless so if you have no problems then its a good sign and I will
reenable mpsafe networking (default).

Thanks really appreciated.

Chris