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RL(4)			    Kernel Interfaces Manual			 RL(4)

NAME
       rl -- RealTek 8129/8139 Fast Ethernet device driver

SYNOPSIS
       To  compile  this  driver into the kernel, place	the following lines in
       your kernel configuration file:

	     device miibus
	     device rl

       Alternatively, to load the driver as a module at	boot time,  place  the
       following line in loader.conf(5):

	     if_rl_load="YES"

DESCRIPTION
       The  rl	driver provides	support	for PCI	Ethernet adapters and embedded
       controllers based on the	RealTek	8129 and 8139 Fast Ethernet controller
       chips.

       The RealTek 8129/8139 series controllers	use bus	master DMA but do  not
       use  a  descriptor-based	 data transfer mechanism.  The receiver	uses a
       single fixed size ring buffer from which	packets	must  be  copied  into
       mbufs.	For  transmission, there are only four outbound	packet address
       registers which require all outgoing packets to be stored as contiguous
       buffers.	 Furthermore, outbound packet buffers must be longword aligned
       or else transmission will fail.

       The 8129	differs	from the 8139 in that the 8139	has  an	 internal  PHY
       which is	controlled through special direct access registers whereas the
       8129  uses  an  external	PHY via	an MII bus.  The 8139 supports both 10
       and 100Mbps speeds in either full or half duplex.  The 8129 can support
       the same	speeds and modes given an appropriate PHY chip.

       Note: support for the 8139C+ chip is provided by	the re(4) driver.

       The rl driver supports the following media types:

       autoselect	     Enable autoselection of the media	type  and  op-
			     tions.   This  is	only supported if the PHY chip
			     attached to the RealTek controller	supports  NWAY
			     autonegotiation.	The user can manually override
			     the autoselected mode by adding media options  to
			     the /etc/rc.conf file.

       10baseT/UTP	     Set  10Mbps  operation.   The mediaopt option can
			     also be used  to  select  either  full-duplex  or
			     half-duplex modes.

       100baseTX	     Set   100Mbps  (Fast  Ethernet)  operation.   The
			     mediaopt option can also be used to select	either
			     full-duplex or half-duplex	modes.

       The rl driver supports the following media options:

       full-duplex	     Force full	duplex operation.

       half-duplex	     Force half	duplex operation.

       Note that the 100baseTX media type is only available  if	 supported  by
       the  adapter.   For  more  information  on configuring this device, see
       ifconfig(8).

HARDWARE
       Adapters	supported by the rl driver include:

       o   Accton "Cheetah" EN1207D (MPX 5030/5038; RealTek 8139 clone)
       o   Allied Telesyn AT2550
       o   Allied Telesyn AT2500TX
       o   Belkin F5D5000
       o   BUFFALO (Melco INC.)	LPC-CB-CLX (CardBus)
       o   Compaq HNE-300
       o   CompUSA no-name 10/100 PCI Ethernet NIC
       o   Corega FEther CB-TXD
       o   Corega FEtherII CB-TXD
       o   D-Link DFE-520TX (rev. C1)
       o   D-Link DFE-528TX
       o   D-Link DFE-530TX+
       o   D-Link DFE-538TX
       o   D-Link DFE-690TXD
       o   Edimax EP-4103DL CardBus
       o   Encore ENL832-TX 10/100 M PCI
       o   Farallon NetLINE 10/100 PCI
       o   Genius GF100TXR
       o   GigaFast Ethernet EE100-AXP
       o   KTX-9130TX 10/100 Fast Ethernet
       o   LevelOne FPC-0106TX
       o   Longshine LCS-8038TX-R
       o   NDC Communications NE100TX-E
       o   Netronix Inc. EA-1210 NetEther 10/100
       o   Nortel Networks 10/100BaseTX
       o   OvisLink LEF-8129TX
       o   OvisLink LEF-8139TX
       o   Peppercon AG	ROL-F
       o   Planex FNW-3603-TX
       o   Planex FNW-3800-TX
       o   SMC EZ Card 10/100 PCI 1211-TX
       o   SOHO	(PRAGMATIC) UE-1211C

LOADER TUNABLES
       dev.rl.%unit.prefer_iomap
	       This tunable controls which register mapping should be used  on
	       the  specified device.  A non-zero value	enables	I/O space reg-
	       ister mapping.  For controllers that have no I/O	space register
	       mapping this tunable should be set to 0	to  use	 memory	 space
	       register	mapping.  The default value is 1 to use	I/O space reg-
	       ister mapping.

       dev.rl.%unit.twister_enable
	       Non-zero	 value	enables	the long cable tuning on the specified
	       device.	Disabled by default.

DIAGNOSTICS
       rl%d: couldn't map memory  A fatal initialization error has occurred.

       rl%d: couldn't map interrupt  A	fatal  initialization  error  has  oc-
       curred.

       rl%d:  watchdog	timeout	 The device has	stopped	responding to the net-
       work, or	there is a problem with	the network connection (cable).

       rl%d: no	memory for rx list  The	driver failed to allocate an mbuf  for
       the receiver ring.

       rl%d:  no memory	for tx list  The driver	failed to allocate an mbuf for
       the transmitter ring when allocating a pad buffer or collapsing an mbuf
       chain into a cluster.

       rl%d: chip is in	D3 power state -- setting to D0	 This message  applies
       only  to	 adapters which	support	power management.  Some	operating sys-
       tems place the controller in low	power mode  when  shutting  down,  and
       some PCI	BIOSes fail to bring the chip out of this state	before config-
       uring  it.  The controller loses	all of its PCI configuration in	the D3
       state, so if the	BIOS does not set it back to full power	mode in	 time,
       it will not be able to configure	it correctly.  The driver tries	to de-
       tect  this  condition and bring the adapter back	to the D0 (full	power)
       state, but this may not be enough to return the driver to a fully oper-
       ational condition.  If you see this message at boot time	and the	driver
       fails to	attach the device as a network interface,  you	will  have  to
       perform second warm boot	to have	the device properly configured.

       Note that this condition	only occurs when warm booting from another op-
       erating	system.	  If  you  power  down	your  system  prior to booting
       FreeBSD,	the card should	be configured correctly.

SEE ALSO
       altq(4),	 arp(4),  miibus(4),  netintro(4),  ng_ether(4),   polling(4),
       ifconfig(8)

       The RealTek 8129, 8139 and 8139C+ datasheets, https://www.realtek.com.

HISTORY
       The rl device driver first appeared in FreeBSD 3.0.

AUTHORS
       The rl driver was written by Bill Paul <wpaul@ctr.columbia.edu>.

BUGS
       Since  outbound	packets	must be	longword aligned, the transmit routine
       has to copy an unaligned	packet into  an	 mbuf  cluster	buffer	before
       transmission.   The driver abuses the fact that the cluster buffer pool
       is allocated at system startup time in a	contiguous region starting  at
       a  page boundary.  Since	cluster	buffers	are 2048 bytes,	they are long-
       word aligned by definition.  The	driver probably	should not be  depend-
       ing on this characteristic.

       The  RealTek data sheets	are of especially poor quality,	and there is a
       lot of information missing particularly concerning the receiver	opera-
       tion.   One  particularly  important  fact that the data	sheets fail to
       mention relates to the way in which  the	 chip  fills  in  the  receive
       buffer.	 When  an  interrupt is	posted to signal that a	frame has been
       received, it is possible	that another frame might be in the process  of
       being  copied into the receive buffer while the driver is busy handling
       the first one.  If the driver manages to	finish	processing  the	 first
       frame  before  the  chip	is done	DMAing the rest	of the next frame, the
       driver may attempt to process the next frame in the buffer  before  the
       chip has	had a chance to	finish DMAing all of it.

       The  driver  can	 check for an incomplete frame by inspecting the frame
       length in the header preceding the actual packet	 data:	an  incomplete
       frame will have the magic length	of 0xFFF0.  When the driver encounters
       this  value,  it	 knows	that  it has finished processing all currently
       available packets.  Neither this	magic value nor	its  significance  are
       documented anywhere in the RealTek data sheets.

FreeBSD	13.2		       January 16, 2013				 RL(4)

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | HARDWARE | LOADER TUNABLES | DIAGNOSTICS | SEE ALSO | HISTORY | AUTHORS | BUGS

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