Re: Support for newer Ethernet chips in RE(4) driver?

On Fri, Oct 08, 2010 at 05:31:03PM +0200, Mark Martinec wrote:
> The current re(4) Realtek Ethernet adapter driver supports the
> 8139C+/8169/816xS/811xS/8101E chips, but lacks support for newer
> Realtek network interface controllers such as RTL8111 C/E/D,
> the RTL8168 series and some other.
> 

Actually re(4) supports much more controllers than that. Man page
needs updating to reflect this.

> This is unfortunate as the RTL8111E and RTL8111D controllers
> found their way (in singles or in pairs) into the current families
> of GigaByte motherboards (such as GA-X58A-UD9/7/5/3R, GA-H55M*, ...),
> and RTL8111C found its way into Asus motherboards (such as P6T),
> and quite likely into other newer products.
> 

RTL8111C/D/DP are supported. Because there are too many variants
there might be some revisions which are not supported yet but I
didn't see any other reports that request supports for newer
RealTek controllers.

> An updated re driver source for FreeBSD 8.0 is available from
> the Realtek's web site ( http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/ )
> and claims to add support for chips and chipsets:
> 
>   RTL8111/RTL8111B/RTL8111C/RTL8111CP/RTL8111D(L)/RTL8111DP/RTL8111E
>   RTL8168/RTL8168B/RTL8168C/RTL8168CP/RTL8168D/RTL8168E
>   RTL8169S/RTL8169SB/RTL8169SC
>   RTL8101E/RTL8102E/RTL8103E/RTL8401E/RTL8105E
> 

Specifically I don't know RTL8104E/RTL8105E controllers but others
would be supported by re(4).

> I tested the new Realtek driver with RTL8111E on FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE,
> works well.
> 

Does stock re(4) fail to recognize your controller? If yes, please
send me dmesg output(pciconf output is useless for RealTek
controllers).

> Any chance of importing the updated driver (or adding support

I don't see any reason importing their driver.

> for newer chips in some other way) into CURRENT so that it
> could find its way to the 9.0 ?
> 

As I said if your controller is not supported by re(4), show me
more information about your controller.