My network card doesnt work? Davicom DM9102AF chipset
 

I just installed FreeBSD 5.2.1 and cant get my network card to work.

I have a Cnet PRO 200WL with a Davicom DM9102AF chipset. My router has a DHCP server, so I should be getting parameters from it, which i dont. As Im quite new to UNIX-like OS, I dont know what to do. It seems like my NIC is supported by the kernel, but it doesnt work properly. Do I need extra kerlen-options perhaps? When I do an ifconfig I see my NIC as dc0 and its status is Active, but theres not assigned an IP adr to it. This same NIC works with other OS like Linux and Windows, in Linux it uses Davicom drivers.

Anybody have a clue?

this is from the handbook, so i hope it helps.

Edit your /etc/rc.conf to include the following:

ifconfig_dc0="DHCP"


you can find the rest of the info here

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO...work-dhcp.html
good luck.

i knew that, thanks anyway...

my problem is (after further testing) that the driver is loaded, but that i cant seem to connect to the router to get a IP adr. i cant ping, i cant do anything with the nic.. i can assign an ip adr to it, but that still doesnt allow me to do anything..

maybe its the wrong driver and that there is no driver for my NIC, how can i find this out?

my freebsd installation is absolutely crap without a internet connection.. i cant install programs or do anything else usefull with it...


It seems like the nic is working.. its status is UP????

pciconf -l should list pci devices, looking at the supported hardware,

http://www.freebsd.org/releases/5.2.....html#ETHERNET

it looks like the right driver, but according to this

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?q...+5.2.1-RELEASE

i don't see the actual chipset. does

kldstat -v

show miibus loaded?

If you can assign an IP to the interface, then the driver is loaded correctly, otherwise you would get something like "DEVICE NOT FOUND" when attempting to ifconfig dc0.

What's the ouput of the following two commands?
$ ifconfig -a
$ dmesg

you might have a look here,

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=53656

it suggests the problem has been corrected, you might try email the responsible parties.
good luck.

Looks like the damn chipset isnt fully supported..?

kldstat -l shows a bunch of miibus/.. stuff, and among them a miibus/dcphy.. (the one im looking for?)

its hard for me to post outputs as im in another os, but in short:

ifconfig -a shows that the device is working, its active and ON, its even assigned an ip adr, im not shure if it got it from DHCP, but its the same class of IPs it would have gotten from the server, 10.0.0.5.. the next free IP should however be 10.0.0.4... its not possible to do anything network related commands though...

dmesg shows that dc0 is loaded... it also show an error:

dc0: failed to force tx and rx to idle state

this i was told is not a critticcal error...so..


anyway.. im going to contact the responsible parties, if they have no way of getting it to work, i'll just go buy a new ethernet adapter...any suggestions perhaps?

Anything with an Intel 82559 chipset. In fact, nearly all Intel ethernet chipsets are well supported, except for the IPSec off-loading on their -V cards (they keep that API closed to outsiders for "trade secret" reasons). Even most of the Intel GigE stuff is supported in the various BSDs.

I will say that you pay a little bit more for the Intel cards than you would a Realtek or a National Semiconductor based card, but it's well worth it. The Intels are utterly reliable and usually have much better performance. Realtek cards have been known to tax CPUs (since most of the checks are done by the driver, not the card) and at high throughput they drop packets.