man pages section 7: Device and Network Interfaces

rge(7D)

Name

rge– Realtek Gigabit Ethernet Network Adapter driver

Synopsis

/dev/rge

Description

The rge Gigabit Ethernet driver is a multi-threaded, loadable, clonable, GLD-based STREAMS driver supporting the Data Link Provider Interface, dlpi(7P), on Realtek Gigabit Ethernet Network Adapter.

The rge driver functions includes controller initialization, frame transmit and receive, promiscuous and multicast support, and error recovery and reporting.

APPLICATION PROGRAMMING INTERFACE

The cloning, character-special device /dev/rge is used to access all Realtek Gigabit Ethernet devices (RTL8169S/8110S) installed within the system.

The rge driver is managed by the dladm(1M) command line utility, which allows VLANs to be defined on top of rge instances and for rge instances to be aggregated. See dladm(1M) for more details.

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

Maximum SDU (with jumbo frame) is 7000.
Minimum SDU is 0.
DSLAP address length is 8 bytes.
MAC type is DL_ETHER.
SAP length value is -2, meaning the physical address component is followed immediately by a 2-byte sap component within the DLSAP address.
Broadcast address value is Ethernet/IEEE broadcast address (FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF).

Once in the DL_ATTACHED state, you must send a DL_BIND_REQ to associate a particular Service Access Point (SAP) with the stream.

CONFIGURATION

By default, the rge driver performs auto-negotiation to select the link speed and mode. Link speed and mode can be any one of the following:

1000 Mbps, full-duplex
100 Mbps, full-duplex
100 Mbps, half-duplex
10 Mbps, full-duplex
10 Mbps, half-duplex

Alternatively, you can set the capabilities advertised by the rge device using ndd(1M). The driver supports a number of parameters whose names begin with adv_. Each of these parameters contains a boolean value that determines if the device advertises that mode of operation. The adv_pause_cap indicates if half/full duplex pause is advertised to link partner. You can set adv_asym_pause_cap to advertise to the link partner that asymmetric pause is desired.

For example, to prevent the device 'rge2' from advertising gigabit capabilities, enter (as super-user):

# ndd -set /dev/rge2 adv_1000fdx_cap 0

All capabilities default to enabled. Note that changing any capability parameter causes the link to go down while the link partners renegotiate the link speed/duplex using the newly changed capabilities.

You can find the current parameter settings by using ndd -get. In addition, the driver exports the current state, speed, duplex setting, and working mode of the link via ndd parameters (these are read only and may not be changed). For example, to check link state of device rge0:

# ndd -get /dev/rge0 link_status
1
# ndd -get /dev/rge0 link_speed
100
# ndd -get /dev/rge0 link_duplex
2

The output above indicates that the link is up and running at 100Mbps full-duplex. In addition, the driver exports its working mode by loop_mode. If it is set to 0, the loopback mode is disabled.

Files

/dev/rge*: Character special device.
/kernel/drv/rge: 32–bit x86 rge driver binary.
/kernel/drv/amd64/rge: 64–bit x86 rge driver binary.
/kernel/drv/sparcv9/rge: SPARC rge driver binary.

Attributes

See attributes(5) for a description of the following attributes:

ATTRIBUTE TYPE	ATTRIBUTE VALUE
Architecture	SPARC, x86