FreeBSD ethernet on a Sun Ultra 20

[Peter Jeremy]

On 2007-Feb-25 13:40:39 +0100, Lars Tunkrans <lars.tunkrans at bredband.net> wrote:
>On Solaris10/OpenSolaris   a file called  /etc/driver_aliases   is 
>created which contains  all the known  PCI-DEVICE  ID's 
>known  by the software ( devicedrivers ).

There's nothing similar in FreeBSD.  Most drivers have a PCI ID table
embedded in them in some form but there's no defined interface for
querying a driver as to what PCI IDs it recognizes.  Each driver is
responsible for deciding whether it can support a specific device or
not.  That decision can be based on information other than just the
PCI ID.  For example the RealTek 8139 and 8139C+ share the same PCI ID
but have different FreeBSD drivers (rl(4) and re(4), respectively).

Note that ISA devices (for example) don't have anything equivalent to
a PCI ID.

>FreeBSD  has a very  good list  of supported Hardware  that details  
>which  chipsets  are supported. 

That list is auto-generated from the section 4 man pages.  If someone
wanted to annotate all the man pages with PCI IDs then the web page
would update automatically.

>Maybe this list now needs to be enhanced with the PCI device codes, as  
>a device with the same generic name  apperantly
>now  can have several  PCI Device codes.

This has always been the case.  Compaq/HP (and probably other vendors)
regularly put vendor-specific PCI IDs into generic parts in their
systems.  Conversely, changing the chips in systems without mentioning
this anywhere is also quite common (WLAN cards are notorious for this)
- this can mean that two cards with identical part numbers and
otherwise indistinguishable from the outside of the box can require
totally different drivers.

-- 
Peter Jeremy
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 187 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-amd64/attachments/20070226/beb93139/attachment.pgp