Based on kernel version 2.6.26. Page generated on 2008-07-16 21:13 EST.
1 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2 NOTE: See also arcnet-hardware.txt in this directory for jumper-setting 3 and cabling information if you're like many of us and didn't happen to get a 4 manual with your ARCnet card. 5 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6 7 Since no one seems to listen to me otherwise, perhaps a poem will get your 8 attention: 9 This driver's getting fat and beefy, 10 But my cat is still named Fifi. 11 12 Hmm, I think I'm allowed to call that a poem, even though it's only two 13 lines. Hey, I'm in Computer Science, not English. Give me a break. 14 15 The point is: I REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY want to hear from you if 16 you test this and get it working. Or if you don't. Or anything. 17 18 ARCnet 0.32 ALPHA first made it into the Linux kernel 1.1.80 - this was 19 nice, but after that even FEWER people started writing to me because they 20 didn't even have to install the patch. <sigh> 21 22 Come on, be a sport! Send me a success report! 23 24 (hey, that was even better than my original poem... this is getting bad!) 25 26 27 -------- 28 WARNING: 29 -------- 30 31 If you don't e-mail me about your success/failure soon, I may be forced to 32 start SINGING. And we don't want that, do we? 33 34 (You know, it might be argued that I'm pushing this point a little too much. 35 If you think so, why not flame me in a quick little e-mail? Please also 36 include the type of card(s) you're using, software, size of network, and 37 whether it's working or not.) 38 39 My e-mail address is: apenwarr[AT]worldvisions[DOT]ca 40 41 42 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 43 44 45 These are the ARCnet drivers for Linux. 46 47 48 This new release (2.91) has been put together by David Woodhouse 49 <dwmw2[AT]cam.ac[DOT]uk>, in an attempt to tidy up the driver after adding support 50 for yet another chipset. Now the generic support has been separated from the 51 individual chipset drivers, and the source files aren't quite so packed with 52 #ifdefs! I've changed this file a bit, but kept it in the first person from 53 Avery, because I didn't want to completely rewrite it. 54 55 The previous release resulted from many months of on-and-off effort from me 56 (Avery Pennarun), many bug reports/fixes and suggestions from others, and in 57 particular a lot of input and coding from Tomasz Motylewski. Starting with 58 ARCnet 2.10 ALPHA, Tomasz's all-new-and-improved RFC1051 support has been 59 included and seems to be working fine! 60 61 62 Where do I discuss these drivers? 63 --------------------------------- 64 65 Tomasz has been so kind as to set up a new and improved mailing list. 66 Subscribe by sending a message with the BODY "subscribe linux-arcnet YOUR 67 REAL NAME" to listserv[AT]tichy.ch.uj.edu.pl[DOT] Then, to submit messages to the 68 list, mail to linux-arcnet[AT]tichy.ch.uj.edu.pl[DOT] 69 70 There are archives of the mailing list at: 71 http://tichy.ch.uj.edu.pl/lists/linux-arcnet 72 73 The people on linux-net[AT]vger.kernel[DOT]org have also been known to be very 74 helpful, especially when we're talking about ALPHA Linux kernels that may or 75 may not work right in the first place. 76 77 78 Other Drivers and Info 79 ---------------------- 80 81 You can try my ARCNET page on the World Wide Web at: 82 http://www.worldvisions.ca/~apenwarr/arcnet/ 83 84 Also, SMC (one of the companies that makes ARCnet cards) has a WWW site you 85 might be interested in, which includes several drivers for various cards 86 including ARCnet. Try: 87 http://www.smc.com/ 88 89 Performance Technologies makes various network software that supports 90 ARCnet: 91 http://www.perftech.com/ or ftp to ftp.perftech.com. 92 93 Novell makes a networking stack for DOS which includes ARCnet drivers. Try 94 FTPing to ftp.novell.com. 95 96 You can get the Crynwr packet driver collection (including arcether.com, the 97 one you'll want to use with ARCnet cards) from 98 oak.oakland.edu:/simtel/msdos/pktdrvr. It won't work perfectly on a 386+ 99 without patches, though, and also doesn't like several cards. Fixed 100 versions are available on my WWW page, or via e-mail if you don't have WWW 101 access. 102 103 104 Installing the Driver 105 --------------------- 106 107 All you will need to do in order to install the driver is: 108 make config 109 (be sure to choose ARCnet in the network devices 110 and at least one chipset driver.) 111 make clean 112 make zImage 113 114 If you obtained this ARCnet package as an upgrade to the ARCnet driver in 115 your current kernel, you will need to first copy arcnet.c over the one in 116 the linux/drivers/net directory. 117 118 You will know the driver is installed properly if you get some ARCnet 119 messages when you reboot into the new Linux kernel. 120 121 There are four chipset options: 122 123 1. Standard ARCnet COM90xx chipset. 124 125 This is the normal ARCnet card, which you've probably got. This is the only 126 chipset driver which will autoprobe if not told where the card is. 127 It following options on the command line: 128 com90xx=[<io>[,<irq>[,<shmem>]]][,<name>] | <name> 129 130 If you load the chipset support as a module, the options are: 131 io=<io> irq=<irq> shmem=<shmem> device=<name> 132 133 To disable the autoprobe, just specify "com90xx=" on the kernel command line. 134 To specify the name alone, but allow autoprobe, just put "com90xx=<name>" 135 136 2. ARCnet COM20020 chipset. 137 138 This is the new chipset from SMC with support for promiscuous mode (packet 139 sniffing), extra diagnostic information, etc. Unfortunately, there is no 140 sensible method of autoprobing for these cards. You must specify the I/O 141 address on the kernel command line. 142 The command line options are: 143 com20020=<io>[,<irq>[,<node_ID>[,backplane[,CKP[,timeout]]]]][,name] 144 145 If you load the chipset support as a module, the options are: 146 io=<io> irq=<irq> node=<node_ID> backplane=<backplane> clock=<CKP> 147 timeout=<timeout> device=<name> 148 149 The COM20020 chipset allows you to set the node ID in software, overriding the 150 default which is still set in DIP switches on the card. If you don't have the 151 COM20020 data sheets, and you don't know what the other three options refer 152 to, then they won't interest you - forget them. 153 154 3. ARCnet COM90xx chipset in IO-mapped mode. 155 156 This will also work with the normal ARCnet cards, but doesn't use the shared 157 memory. It performs less well than the above driver, but is provided in case 158 you have a card which doesn't support shared memory, or (strangely) in case 159 you have so many ARCnet cards in your machine that you run out of shmem slots. 160 If you don't give the IO address on the kernel command line, then the driver 161 will not find the card. 162 The command line options are: 163 com90io=<io>[,<irq>][,<name>] 164 165 If you load the chipset support as a module, the options are: 166 io=<io> irq=<irq> device=<name> 167 168 4. ARCnet RIM I cards. 169 170 These are COM90xx chips which are _completely_ memory mapped. The support for 171 these is not tested. If you have one, please mail the author with a success 172 report. All options must be specified, except the device name. 173 Command line options: 174 arcrimi=<shmem>,<irq>,<node_ID>[,<name>] 175 176 If you load the chipset support as a module, the options are: 177 shmem=<shmem> irq=<irq> node=<node_ID> device=<name> 178 179 180 Loadable Module Support 181 ----------------------- 182 183 Configure and rebuild Linux. When asked, answer 'm' to "Generic ARCnet 184 support" and to support for your ARCnet chipset if you want to use the 185 loadable module. You can also say 'y' to "Generic ARCnet support" and 'm' 186 to the chipset support if you wish. 187 188 make config 189 make clean 190 make zImage 191 make modules 192 193 If you're using a loadable module, you need to use insmod to load it, and 194 you can specify various characteristics of your card on the command 195 line. (In recent versions of the driver, autoprobing is much more reliable 196 and works as a module, so most of this is now unnecessary.) 197 198 For example: 199 cd /usr/src/linux/modules 200 insmod arcnet.o 201 insmod com90xx.o 202 insmod com20020.o io=0x2e0 device=eth1 203 204 205 Using the Driver 206 ---------------- 207 208 If you build your kernel with ARCnet COM90xx support included, it should 209 probe for your card automatically when you boot. If you use a different 210 chipset driver complied into the kernel, you must give the necessary options 211 on the kernel command line, as detailed above. 212 213 Go read the NET-2-HOWTO and ETHERNET-HOWTO for Linux; they should be 214 available where you picked up this driver. Think of your ARCnet as a 215 souped-up (or down, as the case may be) Ethernet card. 216 217 By the way, be sure to change all references from "eth0" to "arc0" in the 218 HOWTOs. Remember that ARCnet isn't a "true" Ethernet, and the device name 219 is DIFFERENT. 220 221 222 Multiple Cards in One Computer 223 ------------------------------ 224 225 Linux has pretty good support for this now, but since I've been busy, the 226 ARCnet driver has somewhat suffered in this respect. COM90xx support, if 227 compiled into the kernel, will (try to) autodetect all the installed cards. 228 229 If you have other cards, with support compiled into the kernel, then you can 230 just repeat the options on the kernel command line, e.g.: 231 LILO: linux com20020=0x2e0 com20020=0x380 com90io=0x260 232 233 If you have the chipset support built as a loadable module, then you need to 234 do something like this: 235 insmod -o arc0 com90xx 236 insmod -o arc1 com20020 io=0x2e0 237 insmod -o arc2 com90xx 238 The ARCnet drivers will now sort out their names automatically. 239 240 241 How do I get it to work with...? 242 -------------------------------- 243 244 NFS: Should be fine linux->linux, just pretend you're using Ethernet cards. 245 oak.oakland.edu:/simtel/msdos/nfs has some nice DOS clients. There 246 is also a DOS-based NFS server called SOSS. It doesn't multitask 247 quite the way Linux does (actually, it doesn't multitask AT ALL) but 248 you never know what you might need. 249 250 With AmiTCP (and possibly others), you may need to set the following 251 options in your Amiga nfstab: MD 1024 MR 1024 MW 1024 252 (Thanks to Christian Gottschling <ferksy[AT]indigo.tng.oche[DOT]de> 253 for this.) 254 255 Probably these refer to maximum NFS data/read/write block sizes. I 256 don't know why the defaults on the Amiga didn't work; write to me if 257 you know more. 258 259 DOS: If you're using the freeware arcether.com, you might want to install 260 the driver patch from my web page. It helps with PC/TCP, and also 261 can get arcether to load if it timed out too quickly during 262 initialization. In fact, if you use it on a 386+ you REALLY need 263 the patch, really. 264 265 Windows: See DOS :) Trumpet Winsock works fine with either the Novell or 266 Arcether client, assuming you remember to load winpkt of course. 267 268 LAN Manager and Windows for Workgroups: These programs use protocols that 269 are incompatible with the Internet standard. They try to pretend 270 the cards are Ethernet, and confuse everyone else on the network. 271 272 However, v2.00 and higher of the Linux ARCnet driver supports this 273 protocol via the 'arc0e' device. See the section on "Multiprotocol 274 Support" for more information. 275 276 Using the freeware Samba server and clients for Linux, you can now 277 interface quite nicely with TCP/IP-based WfWg or Lan Manager 278 networks. 279 280 Windows 95: Tools are included with Win95 that let you use either the LANMAN 281 style network drivers (NDIS) or Novell drivers (ODI) to handle your 282 ARCnet packets. If you use ODI, you'll need to use the 'arc0' 283 device with Linux. If you use NDIS, then try the 'arc0e' device. 284 See the "Multiprotocol Support" section below if you need arc0e, 285 you're completely insane, and/or you need to build some kind of 286 hybrid network that uses both encapsulation types. 287 288 OS/2: I've been told it works under Warp Connect with an ARCnet driver from 289 SMC. You need to use the 'arc0e' interface for this. If you get 290 the SMC driver to work with the TCP/IP stuff included in the 291 "normal" Warp Bonus Pack, let me know. 292 293 ftp.microsoft.com also has a freeware "Lan Manager for OS/2" client 294 which should use the same protocol as WfWg does. I had no luck 295 installing it under Warp, however. Please mail me with any results. 296 297 NetBSD/AmiTCP: These use an old version of the Internet standard ARCnet 298 protocol (RFC1051) which is compatible with the Linux driver v2.10 299 ALPHA and above using the arc0s device. (See "Multiprotocol ARCnet" 300 below.) ** Newer versions of NetBSD apparently support RFC1201. 301 302 303 Using Multiprotocol ARCnet 304 -------------------------- 305 306 The ARCnet driver v2.10 ALPHA supports three protocols, each on its own 307 "virtual network device": 308 309 arc0 - RFC1201 protocol, the official Internet standard which just 310 happens to be 100% compatible with Novell's TRXNET driver. 311 Version 1.00 of the ARCnet driver supported _only_ this 312 protocol. arc0 is the fastest of the three protocols (for 313 whatever reason), and allows larger packets to be used 314 because it supports RFC1201 "packet splitting" operations. 315 Unless you have a specific need to use a different protocol, 316 I strongly suggest that you stick with this one. 317 318 arc0e - "Ethernet-Encapsulation" which sends packets over ARCnet 319 that are actually a lot like Ethernet packets, including the 320 6-byte hardware addresses. This protocol is compatible with 321 Microsoft's NDIS ARCnet driver, like the one in WfWg and 322 LANMAN. Because the MTU of 493 is actually smaller than the 323 one "required" by TCP/IP (576), there is a chance that some 324 network operations will not function properly. The Linux 325 TCP/IP layer can compensate in most cases, however, by 326 automatically fragmenting the TCP/IP packets to make them 327 fit. arc0e also works slightly more slowly than arc0, for 328 reasons yet to be determined. (Probably it's the smaller 329 MTU that does it.) 330 331 arc0s - The "[s]imple" RFC1051 protocol is the "previous" Internet 332 standard that is completely incompatible with the new 333 standard. Some software today, however, continues to 334 support the old standard (and only the old standard) 335 including NetBSD and AmiTCP. RFC1051 also does not support 336 RFC1201's packet splitting, and the MTU of 507 is still 337 smaller than the Internet "requirement," so it's quite 338 possible that you may run into problems. It's also slower 339 than RFC1201 by about 25%, for the same reason as arc0e. 340 341 The arc0s support was contributed by Tomasz Motylewski 342 and modified somewhat by me. Bugs are probably my fault. 343 344 You can choose not to compile arc0e and arc0s into the driver if you want - 345 this will save you a bit of memory and avoid confusion when eg. trying to 346 use the "NFS-root" stuff in recent Linux kernels. 347 348 The arc0e and arc0s devices are created automatically when you first 349 ifconfig the arc0 device. To actually use them, though, you need to also 350 ifconfig the other virtual devices you need. There are a number of ways you 351 can set up your network then: 352 353 354 1. Single Protocol. 355 356 This is the simplest way to configure your network: use just one of the 357 two available protocols. As mentioned above, it's a good idea to use 358 only arc0 unless you have a good reason (like some other software, ie. 359 WfWg, that only works with arc0e). 360 361 If you need only arc0, then the following commands should get you going: 362 ifconfig arc0 MY.IP.ADD.RESS 363 route add MY.IP.ADD.RESS arc0 364 route add -net SUB.NET.ADD.RESS arc0 365 [add other local routes here] 366 367 If you need arc0e (and only arc0e), it's a little different: 368 ifconfig arc0 MY.IP.ADD.RESS 369 ifconfig arc0e MY.IP.ADD.RESS 370 route add MY.IP.ADD.RESS arc0e 371 route add -net SUB.NET.ADD.RESS arc0e 372 373 arc0s works much the same way as arc0e. 374 375 376 2. More than one protocol on the same wire. 377 378 Now things start getting confusing. To even try it, you may need to be 379 partly crazy. Here's what *I* did. :) Note that I don't include arc0s in 380 my home network; I don't have any NetBSD or AmiTCP computers, so I only 381 use arc0s during limited testing. 382 383 I have three computers on my home network; two Linux boxes (which prefer 384 RFC1201 protocol, for reasons listed above), and one XT that can't run 385 Linux but runs the free Microsoft LANMAN Client instead. 386 387 Worse, one of the Linux computers (freedom) also has a modem and acts as 388 a router to my Internet provider. The other Linux box (insight) also has 389 its own IP address and needs to use freedom as its default gateway. The 390 XT (patience), however, does not have its own Internet IP address and so 391 I assigned it one on a "private subnet" (as defined by RFC1597). 392 393 To start with, take a simple network with just insight and freedom. 394 Insight needs to: 395 - talk to freedom via RFC1201 (arc0) protocol, because I like it 396 more and it's faster. 397 - use freedom as its Internet gateway. 398 399 That's pretty easy to do. Set up insight like this: 400 ifconfig arc0 insight 401 route add insight arc0 402 route add freedom arc0 /* I would use the subnet here (like I said 403 to to in "single protocol" above), 404 but the rest of the subnet 405 unfortunately lies across the PPP 406 link on freedom, which confuses 407 things. */ 408 route add default gw freedom 409 410 And freedom gets configured like so: 411 ifconfig arc0 freedom 412 route add freedom arc0 413 route add insight arc0 414 /* and default gateway is configured by pppd */ 415 416 Great, now insight talks to freedom directly on arc0, and sends packets 417 to the Internet through freedom. If you didn't know how to do the above, 418 you should probably stop reading this section now because it only gets 419 worse. 420 421 Now, how do I add patience into the network? It will be using LANMAN 422 Client, which means I need the arc0e device. It needs to be able to talk 423 to both insight and freedom, and also use freedom as a gateway to the 424 Internet. (Recall that patience has a "private IP address" which won't 425 work on the Internet; that's okay, I configured Linux IP masquerading on 426 freedom for this subnet). 427 428 So patience (necessarily; I don't have another IP number from my 429 provider) has an IP address on a different subnet than freedom and 430 insight, but needs to use freedom as an Internet gateway. Worse, most 431 DOS networking programs, including LANMAN, have braindead networking 432 schemes that rely completely on the netmask and a 'default gateway' to 433 determine how to route packets. This means that to get to freedom or 434 insight, patience WILL send through its default gateway, regardless of 435 the fact that both freedom and insight (courtesy of the arc0e device) 436 could understand a direct transmission. 437 438 I compensate by giving freedom an extra IP address - aliased 'gatekeeper' 439 - that is on my private subnet, the same subnet that patience is on. I 440 then define gatekeeper to be the default gateway for patience. 441 442 To configure freedom (in addition to the commands above): 443 ifconfig arc0e gatekeeper 444 route add gatekeeper arc0e 445 route add patience arc0e 446 447 This way, freedom will send all packets for patience through arc0e, 448 giving its IP address as gatekeeper (on the private subnet). When it 449 talks to insight or the Internet, it will use its "freedom" Internet IP 450 address. 451 452 You will notice that we haven't configured the arc0e device on insight. 453 This would work, but is not really necessary, and would require me to 454 assign insight another special IP number from my private subnet. Since 455 both insight and patience are using freedom as their default gateway, the 456 two can already talk to each other. 457 458 It's quite fortunate that I set things up like this the first time (cough 459 cough) because it's really handy when I boot insight into DOS. There, it 460 runs the Novell ODI protocol stack, which only works with RFC1201 ARCnet. 461 In this mode it would be impossible for insight to communicate directly 462 with patience, since the Novell stack is incompatible with Microsoft's 463 Ethernet-Encap. Without changing any settings on freedom or patience, I 464 simply set freedom as the default gateway for insight (now in DOS, 465 remember) and all the forwarding happens "automagically" between the two 466 hosts that would normally not be able to communicate at all. 467 468 For those who like diagrams, I have created two "virtual subnets" on the 469 same physical ARCnet wire. You can picture it like this: 470 471 472 [RFC1201 NETWORK] [ETHER-ENCAP NETWORK] 473 (registered Internet subnet) (RFC1597 private subnet) 474 475 (IP Masquerade) 476 /---------------\ * /---------------\ 477 | | * | | 478 | +-Freedom-*-Gatekeeper-+ | 479 | | | * | | 480 \-------+-------/ | * \-------+-------/ 481 | | | 482 Insight | Patience 483 (Internet) 484 485 486 487 It works: what now? 488 ------------------- 489 490 Send mail describing your setup, preferably including driver version, kernel 491 version, ARCnet card model, CPU type, number of systems on your network, and 492 list of software in use to me at the following address: 493 apenwarr[AT]worldvisions[DOT]ca 494 495 I do send (sometimes automated) replies to all messages I receive. My email 496 can be weird (and also usually gets forwarded all over the place along the 497 way to me), so if you don't get a reply within a reasonable time, please 498 resend. 499 500 501 It doesn't work: what now? 502 -------------------------- 503 504 Do the same as above, but also include the output of the ifconfig and route 505 commands, as well as any pertinent log entries (ie. anything that starts 506 with "arcnet:" and has shown up since the last reboot) in your mail. 507 508 If you want to try fixing it yourself (I strongly recommend that you mail me 509 about the problem first, since it might already have been solved) you may 510 want to try some of the debug levels available. For heavy testing on 511 D_DURING or more, it would be a REALLY good idea to kill your klogd daemon 512 first! D_DURING displays 4-5 lines for each packet sent or received. D_TX, 513 D_RX, and D_SKB actually DISPLAY each packet as it is sent or received, 514 which is obviously quite big. 515 516 Starting with v2.40 ALPHA, the autoprobe routines have changed 517 significantly. In particular, they won't tell you why the card was not 518 found unless you turn on the D_INIT_REASONS debugging flag. 519 520 Once the driver is running, you can run the arcdump shell script (available 521 from me or in the full ARCnet package, if you have it) as root to list the 522 contents of the arcnet buffers at any time. To make any sense at all out of 523 this, you should grab the pertinent RFCs. (some are listed near the top of 524 arcnet.c). arcdump assumes your card is at 0xD0000. If it isn't, edit the 525 script. 526 527 Buffers 0 and 1 are used for receiving, and Buffers 2 and 3 are for sending. 528 Ping-pong buffers are implemented both ways. 529 530 If your debug level includes D_DURING and you did NOT define SLOW_XMIT_COPY, 531 the buffers are cleared to a constant value of 0x42 every time the card is 532 reset (which should only happen when you do an ifconfig up, or when Linux 533 decides that the driver is broken). During a transmit, unused parts of the 534 buffer will be cleared to 0x42 as well. This is to make it easier to figure 535 out which bytes are being used by a packet. 536 537 You can change the debug level without recompiling the kernel by typing: 538 ifconfig arc0 down metric 1xxx 539 /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 540 where "xxx" is the debug level you want. For example, "metric 1015" would put 541 you at debug level 15. Debug level 7 is currently the default. 542 543 Note that the debug level is (starting with v1.90 ALPHA) a binary 544 combination of different debug flags; so debug level 7 is really 1+2+4 or 545 D_NORMAL+D_EXTRA+D_INIT. To include D_DURING, you would add 16 to this, 546 resulting in debug level 23. 547 548 If you don't understand that, you probably don't want to know anyway. 549 E-mail me about your problem. 550 551 552 I want to send money: what now? 553 ------------------------------- 554 555 Go take a nap or something. You'll feel better in the morning.