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Deviceselxl(7D)


NAME

 elxl - 3Com Ethernet device driver

SYNOPSIS

 
/kernel/drv/elxl 

DESCRIPTION

 

The elxl driver currently supports the following network cards: EtherLink XL (3C900-TPO, 3C900-COMBO, 3C900B-TPO, 3C900B-COMBO, and 3C900B-TPC), EtherLink XL 10/100 (3C905-TX Fast, 3C905-T4 Fast, 3C905B-TX Fast, 3C905B-T4 Fast, and 3C905C-TX-M Fast), and EtherLink Server 10/100 (3C980-TX Fast and 3C980C-TXM).

The elxl Ethernet driver is a multi-threaded, loadable, clonable, STREAMS hardware driver supporting the connectionless Data Link Provider Interface, dlpi(7P). Multiple EtherLink XL controllers installed within the system are supported by the driver. The elxl driver provides basic support for the EtherLink hardware. Functions include chip initialization, frame transmit and receive, multicast and promiscuous mode support, and error recovery and reporting.

The cloning, character-special device /dev/elxl is used to access all EtherLink devices installed within the system.

The elxl driver is dependent on /kernel/misc/gld, a loadable kernel module that provides the elxl driver with the DLPI and STREAMS functionality required of a LAN driver. See gld(7D) for more details on the primatives supported by the driver.

The values returned by the driver in the DL_INFO_ACK primitive in response to the DL_INFO_REQ from the user are as follows:

  • Maximum SDU is 1500 (ETHERMTU).
  • Minimum SDU is 0. The driver will pad to the mandatory 60-octet minimum packet size.
  • The dlsap address length is 8.
  • MAC type is DL_ETHER.
  • The sap length value is -2, meaning the physical address component is followed immediately by a 2-byte sap component within the DLSAP address.
  • The broadcast address value is Ethernet/IEEE broadcast address (FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF).

PRECONFIGURATION

 

Supported Settings

 
  • Media Type: Auto Select

Known Problems and Limitations

 
  • 3C905B cards in a Compaq ProLiant 6500 can fail to generate interrupts. There is no known workaround for this problem. However, because some slots appear to be more prone to the problem than others, try correcting the problem by moving the card to another PCI slot. If that fails, try rebooting the machine a number of times to free the card from the wedged state.
  • Early versions of the 3Com 3C905C-TX-M adapter firmware do not support PXE network boot on Solaris systems. If you are using a version earlier than 4.11, upgrade the firmware. The PXE version is indicated by the Managed Boot Agent version number. This number is not normally displayed during boot, but is shown on the PXE configuration screen.

CONFIGURATION

 

The /kernel/drv/elxl.conf file supports the following option:

full-duplex
For full duplex operation use full-duplex=1. For half duplex use full-duplex=0. Half-duplex operation provides better results on older 10-Mbit networks.

FILES

 
/dev/elxl
Special character device
/kernel/drv/elxl.conf
Configuration file for elxl driver

ATTRIBUTES

 

See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

ATTRIBUTE TYPEATTRIBUTE VALUE
ArchitectureIA

SEE ALSO

 

attributes(5), gld(7D), streamio(7I), dlpi(7P).


SunOS 5.9Go To TopLast Changed 27 November 2000

 
      
      
Copyright 2002 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved. Use is subject to license terms.