Re: FreeBSD ethernet on a Sun Ultra 20

On 2007-Feb-25 13:40:39 +0100, Lars Tunkrans <lars.tunkrans@xxxxxxxxxxxx> 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

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