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 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
7 Since no one seems to listen to me otherwise, perhaps a poem will get your
9 This driver's getting fat and beefy,
10 But my cat is still named Fifi.
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.
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.
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>
22 Come on, be a sport! Send me a success report!
24 (hey, that was even better than my original poem... this is getting bad!)
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?
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.)
39 My e-mail address is: apenwarr@worldvisions.ca
42 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
45 These are the ARCnet drivers for Linux.
48 This new release (2.91) has been put together by David Woodhouse
49 <dwmw2@cam.ac.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.
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!
62 Where do I discuss these drivers?
63 ---------------------------------
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@tichy.ch.uj.edu.pl. Then, to submit messages to the
68 list, mail to linux-arcnet@tichy.ch.uj.edu.pl.
70 There are archives of the mailing list at:
71 http://tichy.ch.uj.edu.pl/lists/linux-arcnet
73 The people on linux-net@vger.rutgers.edu 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.
78 Other Drivers and Info
79 ----------------------
81 You can try my ARCNET page on the World Wide Web at:
82 http://www.worldvisions.ca/~apenwarr/arcnet/
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:
89 Performance Technologies makes various network software that supports
91 http://www.perftech.com/ or ftp to ftp.perftech.com.
93 Novell makes a networking stack for DOS which includes ARCnet drivers. Try
94 FTPing to ftp.novell.com.
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
104 Installing the Driver
105 ---------------------
107 All you will need to do in order to install the driver is:
109 (be sure to choose ARCnet in the network devices
110 and at least one chipset driver.)
115 If you obtained this ARCnet package as an upgrade to the ARCnet driver in
116 your current kernel, you will need to first copy arcnet.c over the one in
117 the linux/drivers/net directory.
119 You will know the driver is installed properly if you get some ARCnet
120 messages when you reboot into the new Linux kernel.
122 There are four chipset options:
124 1. Standard ARCnet COM90xx chipset.
126 This is the normal ARCnet card, which you've probably got. This is the only
127 chipset driver which will autoprobe if not told where the card is.
128 It following options on the command line:
129 com90xx=[<io>[,<irq>[,<shmem>]]][,<name>] | <name>
131 If you load the chipset support as a module, the options are:
132 io=<io> irq=<irq> shmem=<shmem> device=<name>
134 To disable the autoprobe, just specify "com90xx=" on the kernel command line.
135 To specify the name alone, but allow autoprobe, just put "com90xx=<name>"
137 2. ARCnet COM20020 chipset.
139 This is the new chipset from SMC with support for promiscuous mode (packet
140 sniffing), extra diagnostic information, etc. Unfortunately, there is no
141 sensible method of autoprobing for these cards. You must specify the I/O
142 address on the kernel command line.
143 The command line options are:
144 com20020=<io>[,<irq>[,<node_ID>[,backplane[,CKP[,timeout]]]]][,name]
146 If you load the chipset support as a module, the options are:
147 io=<io> irq=<irq> node=<node_ID> backplane=<backplane> clock=<CKP>
148 timeout=<timeout> device=<name>
150 The COM20020 chipset allows you to set the node ID in software, overriding the
151 default which is still set in DIP switches on the card. If you don't have the
152 COM20020 data sheets, and you don't know what the other three options refer
153 to, then they won't interest you - forget them.
155 3. ARCnet COM90xx chipset in IO-mapped mode.
157 This will also work with the normal ARCnet cards, but doesn't use the shared
158 memory. It performs less well than the above driver, but is provided in case
159 you have a card which doesn't support shared memory, or (strangely) in case
160 you have so many ARCnet cards in your machine that you run out of shmem slots.
161 If you don't give the IO address on the kernel command line, then the driver
162 will not find the card.
163 The command line options are:
164 com90io=<io>[,<irq>][,<name>]
166 If you load the chipset support as a module, the options are:
167 io=<io> irq=<irq> device=<name>
169 4. ARCnet RIM I cards.
171 These are COM90xx chips which are _completely_ memory mapped. The support for
172 these is not tested. If you have one, please mail the author with a success
173 report. All options must be specified, except the device name.
174 Command line options:
175 arcrimi=<shmem>,<irq>,<node_ID>[,<name>]
177 If you load the chipset support as a module, the options are:
178 shmem=<shmem> irq=<irq> node=<node_ID> device=<name>
181 Loadable Module Support
182 -----------------------
184 Configure and rebuild Linux. When asked, answer 'm' to "Generic ARCnet
185 support" and to support for your ARCnet chipset if you want to use the
186 loadable module. You can also say 'y' to "Generic ARCnet support" and 'm'
187 to the chipset support if you wish.
195 If you're using a loadable module, you need to use insmod to load it, and
196 you can specify various characteristics of your card on the command
197 line. (In recent versions of the driver, autoprobing is much more reliable
198 and works as a module, so most of this is now unnecessary.)
201 cd /usr/src/linux/modules
204 insmod com20020.o io=0x2e0 device=eth1
210 If you build your kernel with ARCnet COM90xx support included, it should
211 probe for your card automatically when you boot. If you use a different
212 chipset driver complied into the kernel, you must give the necessary options
213 on the kernel command line, as detailed above.
215 Go read the NET-2-HOWTO and ETHERNET-HOWTO for Linux; they should be
216 available where you picked up this driver. Think of your ARCnet as a
217 souped-up (or down, as the case may be) Ethernet card.
219 By the way, be sure to change all references from "eth0" to "arc0" in the
220 HOWTOs. Remember that ARCnet isn't a "true" Ethernet, and the device name
224 Multiple Cards in One Computer
225 ------------------------------
227 Linux has pretty good support for this now, but since I've been busy, the
228 ARCnet driver has somewhat suffered in this respect. COM90xx support, if
229 compiled into the kernel, will (try to) autodetect all the installed cards.
231 If you have other cards, with support compiled into the kernel, then you can
232 just repeat the options on the kernel command line, e.g.:
233 LILO: linux com20020=0x2e0 com20020=0x380 com90io=0x260
235 If you have the chipset support built as a loadable module, then you need to
236 do something like this:
237 insmod -o arc0 com90xx
238 insmod -o arc1 com20020 io=0x2e0
239 insmod -o arc2 com90xx
240 The ARCnet drivers will now sort out their names automatically.
243 How do I get it to work with...?
244 --------------------------------
246 NFS: Should be fine linux->linux, just pretend you're using Ethernet cards.
247 oak.oakland.edu:/simtel/msdos/nfs has some nice DOS clients. There
248 is also a DOS-based NFS server called SOSS. It doesn't multitask
249 quite the way Linux does (actually, it doesn't multitask AT ALL) but
250 you never know what you might need.
252 With AmiTCP (and possibly others), you may need to set the following
253 options in your Amiga nfstab: MD 1024 MR 1024 MW 1024
254 (Thanks to Christian Gottschling <ferksy@indigo.tng.oche.de>
257 Probably these refer to maximum NFS data/read/write block sizes. I
258 don't know why the defaults on the Amiga didn't work; write to me if
261 DOS: If you're using the freeware arcether.com, you might want to install
262 the driver patch from my web page. It helps with PC/TCP, and also
263 can get arcether to load if it timed out too quickly during
264 initialization. In fact, if you use it on a 386+ you REALLY need
267 Windows: See DOS :) Trumpet Winsock works fine with either the Novell or
268 Arcether client, assuming you remember to load winpkt of course.
270 LAN Manager and Windows for Workgroups: These programs use protocols that
271 are incompatible with the Internet standard. They try to pretend
272 the cards are Ethernet, and confuse everyone else on the network.
274 However, v2.00 and higher of the Linux ARCnet driver supports this
275 protocol via the 'arc0e' device. See the section on "Multiprotocol
276 Support" for more information.
278 Using the freeware Samba server and clients for Linux, you can now
279 interface quite nicely with TCP/IP-based WfWg or Lan Manager
282 Windows 95: Tools are included with Win95 that let you use either the LANMAN
283 style network drivers (NDIS) or Novell drivers (ODI) to handle your
284 ARCnet packets. If you use ODI, you'll need to use the 'arc0'
285 device with Linux. If you use NDIS, then try the 'arc0e' device.
286 See the "Multiprotocol Support" section below if you need arc0e,
287 you're completely insane, and/or you need to build some kind of
288 hybrid network that uses both encapsulation types.
290 OS/2: I've been told it works under Warp Connect with an ARCnet driver from
291 SMC. You need to use the 'arc0e' interface for this. If you get
292 the SMC driver to work with the TCP/IP stuff included in the
293 "normal" Warp Bonus Pack, let me know.
295 ftp.microsoft.com also has a freeware "Lan Manager for OS/2" client
296 which should use the same protocol as WfWg does. I had no luck
297 installing it under Warp, however. Please mail me with any results.
299 NetBSD/AmiTCP: These use an old version of the Internet standard ARCnet
300 protocol (RFC1051) which is compatible with the Linux driver v2.10
301 ALPHA and above using the arc0s device. (See "Multiprotocol ARCnet"
302 below.) ** Newer versions of NetBSD apparently support RFC1201.
305 Using Multiprotocol ARCnet
306 --------------------------
308 The ARCnet driver v2.10 ALPHA supports three protocols, each on its own
309 "virtual network device":
311 arc0 - RFC1201 protocol, the official Internet standard which just
312 happens to be 100% compatible with Novell's TRXNET driver.
313 Version 1.00 of the ARCnet driver supported _only_ this
314 protocol. arc0 is the fastest of the three protocols (for
315 whatever reason), and allows larger packets to be used
316 because it supports RFC1201 "packet splitting" operations.
317 Unless you have a specific need to use a different protocol,
318 I strongly suggest that you stick with this one.
320 arc0e - "Ethernet-Encapsulation" which sends packets over ARCnet
321 that are actually a lot like Ethernet packets, including the
322 6-byte hardware addresses. This protocol is compatible with
323 Microsoft's NDIS ARCnet driver, like the one in WfWg and
324 LANMAN. Because the MTU of 493 is actually smaller than the
325 one "required" by TCP/IP (576), there is a chance that some
326 network operations will not function properly. The Linux
327 TCP/IP layer can compensate in most cases, however, by
328 automatically fragmenting the TCP/IP packets to make them
329 fit. arc0e also works slightly more slowly than arc0, for
330 reasons yet to be determined. (Probably it's the smaller
333 arc0s - The "[s]imple" RFC1051 protocol is the "previous" Internet
334 standard that is completely incompatible with the new
335 standard. Some software today, however, continues to
336 support the old standard (and only the old standard)
337 including NetBSD and AmiTCP. RFC1051 also does not support
338 RFC1201's packet splitting, and the MTU of 507 is still
339 smaller than the Internet "requirement," so it's quite
340 possible that you may run into problems. It's also slower
341 than RFC1201 by about 25%, for the same reason as arc0e.
343 The arc0s support was contributed by Tomasz Motylewski
344 and modified somewhat by me. Bugs are probably my fault.
346 You can choose not to compile arc0e and arc0s into the driver if you want -
347 this will save you a bit of memory and avoid confusion when eg. trying to
348 use the "NFS-root" stuff in recent Linux kernels.
350 The arc0e and arc0s devices are created automatically when you first
351 ifconfig the arc0 device. To actually use them, though, you need to also
352 ifconfig the other virtual devices you need. There are a number of ways you
353 can set up your network then:
358 This is the simplest way to configure your network: use just one of the
359 two available protocols. As mentioned above, it's a good idea to use
360 only arc0 unless you have a good reason (like some other software, ie.
361 WfWg, that only works with arc0e).
363 If you need only arc0, then the following commands should get you going:
364 ifconfig arc0 MY.IP.ADD.RESS
365 route add MY.IP.ADD.RESS arc0
366 route add -net SUB.NET.ADD.RESS arc0
367 [add other local routes here]
369 If you need arc0e (and only arc0e), it's a little different:
370 ifconfig arc0 MY.IP.ADD.RESS
371 ifconfig arc0e MY.IP.ADD.RESS
372 route add MY.IP.ADD.RESS arc0e
373 route add -net SUB.NET.ADD.RESS arc0e
375 arc0s works much the same way as arc0e.
378 2. More than one protocol on the same wire.
380 Now things start getting confusing. To even try it, you may need to be
381 partly crazy. Here's what *I* did. :) Note that I don't include arc0s in
382 my home network; I don't have any NetBSD or AmiTCP computers, so I only
383 use arc0s during limited testing.
385 I have three computers on my home network; two Linux boxes (which prefer
386 RFC1201 protocol, for reasons listed above), and one XT that can't run
387 Linux but runs the free Microsoft LANMAN Client instead.
389 Worse, one of the Linux computers (freedom) also has a modem and acts as
390 a router to my Internet provider. The other Linux box (insight) also has
391 its own IP address and needs to use freedom as its default gateway. The
392 XT (patience), however, does not have its own Internet IP address and so
393 I assigned it one on a "private subnet" (as defined by RFC1597).
395 To start with, take a simple network with just insight and freedom.
397 - talk to freedom via RFC1201 (arc0) protocol, because I like it
398 more and it's faster.
399 - use freedom as its Internet gateway.
401 That's pretty easy to do. Set up insight like this:
402 ifconfig arc0 insight
403 route add insight arc0
404 route add freedom arc0 /* I would use the subnet here (like I said
405 to to in "single protocol" above),
406 but the rest of the subnet
407 unfortunately lies across the PPP
408 link on freedom, which confuses
410 route add default gw freedom
412 And freedom gets configured like so:
413 ifconfig arc0 freedom
414 route add freedom arc0
415 route add insight arc0
416 /* and default gateway is configured by pppd */
418 Great, now insight talks to freedom directly on arc0, and sends packets
419 to the Internet through freedom. If you didn't know how to do the above,
420 you should probably stop reading this section now because it only gets
423 Now, how do I add patience into the network? It will be using LANMAN
424 Client, which means I need the arc0e device. It needs to be able to talk
425 to both insight and freedom, and also use freedom as a gateway to the
426 Internet. (Recall that patience has a "private IP address" which won't
427 work on the Internet; that's okay, I configured Linux IP masquerading on
428 freedom for this subnet).
430 So patience (necessarily; I don't have another IP number from my
431 provider) has an IP address on a different subnet than freedom and
432 insight, but needs to use freedom as an Internet gateway. Worse, most
433 DOS networking programs, including LANMAN, have braindead networking
434 schemes that rely completely on the netmask and a 'default gateway' to
435 determine how to route packets. This means that to get to freedom or
436 insight, patience WILL send through its default gateway, regardless of
437 the fact that both freedom and insight (courtesy of the arc0e device)
438 could understand a direct transmission.
440 I compensate by giving freedom an extra IP address - aliased 'gatekeeper'
441 - that is on my private subnet, the same subnet that patience is on. I
442 then define gatekeeper to be the default gateway for patience.
444 To configure freedom (in addition to the commands above):
445 ifconfig arc0e gatekeeper
446 route add gatekeeper arc0e
447 route add patience arc0e
449 This way, freedom will send all packets for patience through arc0e,
450 giving its IP address as gatekeeper (on the private subnet). When it
451 talks to insight or the Internet, it will use its "freedom" Internet IP
454 You will notice that we haven't configured the arc0e device on insight.
455 This would work, but is not really necessary, and would require me to
456 assign insight another special IP number from my private subnet. Since
457 both insight and patience are using freedom as their default gateway, the
458 two can already talk to each other.
460 It's quite fortunate that I set things up like this the first time (cough
461 cough) because it's really handy when I boot insight into DOS. There, it
462 runs the Novell ODI protocol stack, which only works with RFC1201 ARCnet.
463 In this mode it would be impossible for insight to communicate directly
464 with patience, since the Novell stack is incompatible with Microsoft's
465 Ethernet-Encap. Without changing any settings on freedom or patience, I
466 simply set freedom as the default gateway for insight (now in DOS,
467 remember) and all the forwarding happens "automagically" between the two
468 hosts that would normally not be able to communicate at all.
470 For those who like diagrams, I have created two "virtual subnets" on the
471 same physical ARCnet wire. You can picture it like this:
474 [RFC1201 NETWORK] [ETHER-ENCAP NETWORK]
475 (registered Internet subnet) (RFC1597 private subnet)
478 /---------------\ * /---------------\
480 | +-Freedom-*-Gatekeeper-+ |
482 \-------+-------/ | * \-------+-------/
492 Send mail describing your setup, preferably including driver version, kernel
493 version, ARCnet card model, CPU type, number of systems on your network, and
494 list of software in use to me at the following address:
495 apenwarr@worldvisions.ca
497 I do send (sometimes automated) replies to all messages I receive. My email
498 can be weird (and also usually gets forwarded all over the place along the
499 way to me), so if you don't get a reply within a reasonable time, please
503 It doesn't work: what now?
504 --------------------------
506 Do the same as above, but also include the output of the ifconfig and route
507 commands, as well as any pertinent log entries (ie. anything that starts
508 with "arcnet:" and has shown up since the last reboot) in your mail.
510 If you want to try fixing it yourself (I strongly recommend that you mail me
511 about the problem first, since it might already have been solved) you may
512 want to try some of the debug levels available. For heavy testing on
513 D_DURING or more, it would be a REALLY good idea to kill your klogd daemon
514 first! D_DURING displays 4-5 lines for each packet sent or received. D_TX,
515 D_RX, and D_SKB actually DISPLAY each packet as it is sent or received,
516 which is obviously quite big.
518 Starting with v2.40 ALPHA, the autoprobe routines have changed
519 significantly. In particular, they won't tell you why the card was not
520 found unless you turn on the D_INIT_REASONS debugging flag.
522 Once the driver is running, you can run the arcdump shell script (available
523 from me or in the full ARCnet package, if you have it) as root to list the
524 contents of the arcnet buffers at any time. To make any sense at all out of
525 this, you should grab the pertinent RFCs. (some are listed near the top of
526 arcnet.c). arcdump assumes your card is at 0xD0000. If it isn't, edit the
529 Buffers 0 and 1 are used for receiving, and Buffers 2 and 3 are for sending.
530 Ping-pong buffers are implemented both ways.
532 If your debug level includes D_DURING and you did NOT define SLOW_XMIT_COPY,
533 the buffers are cleared to a constant value of 0x42 every time the card is
534 reset (which should only happen when you do an ifconfig up, or when Linux
535 decides that the driver is broken). During a transmit, unused parts of the
536 buffer will be cleared to 0x42 as well. This is to make it easier to figure
537 out which bytes are being used by a packet.
539 You can change the debug level without recompiling the kernel by typing:
540 ifconfig arc0 down metric 1xxx
542 where "xxx" is the debug level you want. For example, "metric 1015" would put
543 you at debug level 15. Debug level 7 is currently the default.
545 Note that the debug level is (starting with v1.90 ALPHA) a binary
546 combination of different debug flags; so debug level 7 is really 1+2+4 or
547 D_NORMAL+D_EXTRA+D_INIT. To include D_DURING, you would add 16 to this,
548 resulting in debug level 23.
550 If you don't understand that, you probably don't want to know anyway.
551 E-mail me about your problem.
554 I want to send money: what now?
555 -------------------------------
557 Go take a nap or something. You'll feel better in the morning.