ixgbevf

- Intel 10Gb PCI Express NIC Virtual Function Driver

Synopsis

/dev/ixgbevf*

Description

The ixgbevf 10 Gb NIC Virtual Function driver is a multi-threaded, loadable, clonable, GLD-based STREAMS driver supporting the Data Link Provider Interface, dlpi(7P), on Intel 10-Gigabit PCI Express Ethernet controllers the 82599 NIC and later NICs.

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

APPLICATION PROGRAMMING INTERFACE

The cloning character-special device, /dev/ixgbevf, is used to access the virtual functions of the 82599 NIC and other later Intel 10Gb NIC devices installed within the system.

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

You must send an explicit DL_ATTACH_REQ message to associate the opened stream with a particular device (PPA). The PPA ID is interpreted as an unsigned integer data type and indicates the corresponding device instance (unit) number. The driver returns an error (DL_ERROR_ACK) if the PPA field value does not correspond to a valid device instance number for the system. The device is initialized on first attach and de-initialized (stopped) at last detach.

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

• Maximum SDU is 1500.

• Minimum SDU is 0.

• DLSAP address length is 8.

• MAC type is DL_ETHER.

• SAP (Service Access Point) 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 the Ethernet/IEEE broadcast address (FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF).

• MAC type is DL_ETHER.

• SAP (Service Access Point) 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 the 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 SAP with the stream.

CONFIGURATION

By default, Link speed and mode can only be 10000 Mbps full-duplex. See the IEEE 802.3ae Specificiation for more information.

Files

/dev/ixgbevf*

Special character device

/kernel/drv/ixgbevf

32–bit device driver (x86)

/kernel/drv/amd64/ixgbevf

64–bit device driver (x86)

/kernel/drv/sparcv9/ixgbevf

64–bit device driver (SPARC)

/kernel/drv/ixgbevf.conf

Configuration file

Attributes

See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

See Also

dladm(1M), netstat(1M), driver.conf(4), attributes(5), dlpi(7P), streamio(7I)

Writing Device Drivers

STREAMS Programming Guide

IEEE 802.3ae Specificiation, IEEE - 2002