Success with Qualcomm Atheros QCA8171

[Nils Beyer]

Hi Gulyaev,

Gulyaev Ghosh wrote:
> Since I ask on the FreeBSD forums, there is a proposition to check
> alx-freebsd and have initialized interface.
>
> So if someone have similar hardware, you can got your experience with
> that project and share info.

I've got an onboard "AR8161 Gigabit Ethernet" adapter. With your proposed GIT-
repository and using its branch "master" I'm able to rudimentarily use the
NIC. But only if the network cable is short (< 2m). Using longer cables gives
me a "no carrier" status. When it is connected, speed is abysmal and functio-
nality ceases as soon as I perform an "iperf" benchmark until I reboot.

But for small data transfers (SSH, RSYNC, RDP) it's okay. Mark has done a good
job so far:
===============================================================================
#dmesg | grep alx
alx0: <Qualcomm Atheros AR8161 Gigabit Ethernet> port 0x2000-0x207f mem 0xd0400000-0xd043ffff irq 16 at device 0.0 on pci2
alx0: Ethernet address: 5c:f9:dd:55:c9:fb

#ifconfig alx0
alx0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
        ether 5c:f9:dd:55:c9:fb
        inet6 fe80::5ef9:ddff:fe55:c9fb%alx0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x2 
        nd6 options=29<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
        media: Ethernet autoselect
        status: no carrier

#pciconf -evl | tail -13
alx0 at pci0:2:0:0:        class=0x020000 card=0x05621028 chip=0x10911969 rev=0x10 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'Atheros Communications Inc.'
    device     = 'AR8161 Gigabit Ethernet'
    class      = network
    subclass   = ethernet
  PCI-e errors = Correctable Error Detected
                 Non-Fatal Error Detected
                 Unsupported Request Detected
     Non-fatal = Unsupported Request
     Corrected = Bad TLP
                 Bad DLLP
                 REPLAY_NUM Rollover
                 Replay Timer Timeout
===============================================================================

...




Regards,
Nils