In reviewing a few different manual pages for various ethernet device
drivers, I'm finding a few things that I think are a bit undesirable.
First off, nearly all of the manual pages repeat the same information
about DLPI details that is common to all ethernet drivers. I'd really,
really like to have this information in a common manual page for
"ethernet".
Also, a lot of them repeat the same ndd information that is available as
part of the ieee802.3 man page.
Furthermore, most of them, _including GLDv2 and GLDv3 drivers_, provide
information about device nodes that is really specific to DLPI style 2
drivers. While not technically incorrect, it would be a lot better,
IMO, to provide DLPI style 1 documentation instead... we want people to
use style 1, not style 2. (And eventually, clearview and vanity naming
information will probably need to replace even that.)
Anyway, I'd like ideas, thoughts on this. Does anyone else see this as
a problem that is worth fixing?
As an example, most of the eri(7d) man page could be pruned out. Here's
an example new page for eri(7d). (Obviously we'd need to provide a
suitable Ethernet(7P) man page as well):
NAME
eri - eri Fast-Ethernet device driver
SYNOPSIS
/dev/eri*
DESCRIPTION
The eri Fast Ethernet driver is hardware device driver supporting
the dlpi(7P) for Ethernet(7P) over an eri Fast-Ethernet controller.
Multiple eri devices installed within the system are supported by
the driver.
The eri driver provides basic support for the eri hardware
and handles the eri device. Functions include chip initiali-
zation, frame transit and receive, multicast and promiscuous
support, and error recovery and reporting.
The eri device provides 100Base-TX networking interfaces
using the SUN RIO ASIC and an internal transceiver. The RIO
ASIC provides the PCI interface and MAC functions. The phy-
sical layer functions are provided by the internal tran-
sceiver which connects to a RJ-45 connector.
The 100Base-TX standard specifies an auto-negotiation proto-
col to automatically select the mode and speed of operation.
The internal transceiver is capable of performing auto-
negotiation using the remote-end of the link (link partner)
and receives the capabilities of the remote end. It selects
the highest common denominator mode of operation based on
the priorities. It also supports a forced-mode of operation
under which the driver selects the mode of operation.
APPLICATION PROGRAMMING INTERFACE
The eri driver supports the interface described in
Ethernet(7P).
CONFIGURATION
The eri driver is configured as described in ieee802.3(5). It
supports the following speeds and modes:
o 100 Mbps, full-duplex
o 100 Mbps, half-duplex
o 10 Mbps, full-duplex
o 10 Mbps, half-duplex
The internal transceiver is capable of all of the operating
speeds and modes listed above. By default, auto-negotiation
is used to select the speed and the mode of the link and the
common mode of operation with the link partner.
For users who want to select the speed and mode of the
link, the eri device supports programmable IPG (Inter-Packet
Gap) parameters ipg1 and ipg2. Sometimes, the user may want
to alter these values depending on whether the driver sup-
ports 10 Mbps or 100 Mpbs and accordingly, IPG will be set
to 9.6 or 0.96 microseconds.
eri Parameter List
The eri driver provides for setting and getting various
parameters for the eri device. The parameter list includes
current transceiver status, current link status, inter-
packet gap, local transceiver capabilities and link partner
capabilities.
FILES
/dev/eri* eri special character device.
/kernel/drv/eri.conf System wide default device driver
properties
/kernel/drv/sparcv9/eri 64 bit device driver
SEE ALSO
ndd(1M), dladm(1M), netstat(1M), driver.conf(4),
ieee802.3(5), Ethernet(7P), dlpi(7P)
-- Garrett
_______________________________________________
networking-discuss mailing list
[email protected]
