SK(4)

NAME
sk - SysKonnect XMAC II and Marvell Yukon based Gigabit Ethernet device

SYNOPSIS
device miibus
device sk

Alternatively, to load the driver as a module at boot time, place the following line in /boot/loader.conf:

    if_sk_load="YES"

DESCRIPTION
The sk driver provides support for SysKonnect based Gigabit Ethernet adapters and Marvell based Gigabit Ethernet adapters.

The SysKonnect based adapters consist of two main components: the XaQti Corp. XMAC II gigabit MAC and the SysKonnect GEnesis controller ASIC. The XMAC provides the gigabit MAC and PHY support while the GEnesis provides an interface to the PCI bus, DMA support, packet buffering and arbitration. The GEnesis can control up to two XMACs simultaneously, allowing dual-port NIC configurations.

The Marvell based adapters are a single integrated circuit, but are still presented as a separate MAC and controller ASIC.

The sk driver configures dual port SysKonnect adapters such that each XMAC is treated as a separate logical network interface. Both ports can operate independently of each other and can be connected to separate networks. The SysKonnect driver software currently only uses the second port on dual port adapters for failover purposes: if the link on the primary port fails, the SysKonnect driver will automatically switch traffic onto the second port.

The XaQti XMAC II supports full and half duplex operation with autonegotiation. The XMAC also supports unlimited frame sizes. Support for jumbo frames is provided via the interface MTU setting. Selecting an MTU larger than 1500 bytes with the ifconfig(8) utility configures the adapter to receive and transmit jumbo frames. Using jumbo frames can greatly improve performance for certain tasks, such as file transfers and data streaming.

The sk driver supports the following media types:

autoselect
    Enable autoselection of the media type and options. The user can manually override the autoselected mode by adding media options to the /etc/rc.conf file.

1000baseT
    Set 1000baseT operation over twisted pair. This is only available for SK-982x series adapters with 1000baseT ports. Both full-duplex and half-duplex modes are supported.

1000baseSX
    Set 1000Mbps (gigabit ethernet) operation. Both full-duplex and half-duplex modes are supported.

The sk driver supports the following media options:

full-duplex
    Force full duplex operation

half-duplex
    Force half duplex operation.

The sk driver also supports one special link option for 1000baseT cards:

link0
    With 1000baseT cards, establishing a link between two ports requires that one port be configured as a master and the other a slave. With autonegotiation, the master/slave settings will be chosen automatically. However when manually selecting the link state, it is necessary to force one side of the link to be a master and the other a slave. The sk driver configures the ports as slaves by default. Setting the link0 flag with ifconfig(8) will set a port as a master instead.

For more information on configuring this device, see ifconfig(8).

HARDWARE
The sk driver supports SysKonnect based Gigabit Ethernet adapters and Marvell based Gigabit Ethernet adapters, including the following:

•   3Com 3c940 single port, copper adapter
•   3Com 3c2000-T single port, copper adapter
•   Belkin F5D5005, copper adapter
•   D-Link DGE-530T, copper adapter
•   Linksys EG1032v2, copper adapter
•   Linksys EG1064v2, copper adapter
•   SK-9821 SK-NET GE-T single port, copper adapter
•   SK-9822 SK-NET GE-T dual port, copper adapter
•   SK-9841 SK-NET GE-LX single port, single mode fiber adapter
•   SK-9842 SK-NET GE-LX dual port, single mode fiber adapter
•   SK-9843 SK-NET GE-SX single port, multimode fiber adapter
•   SK-9844 SK-NET GE-SX dual port, multimode fiber adapter
•   SK-9521 V2.0 single port, copper adapter (32-bit)
•   SK-9821 V2.0 single port, copper adapter
•   SK-9843 V2.0 single port, copper adapter
•   SMC 9452TX, copper adapter

DIAGNOSTICS

skc%d: couldn't map memory A fatal initialization error has occurred.

skc%d: couldn't map interrupt A fatal initialization error has occurred.

sk%d: jumbo buffer allocation failed The driver failed to allocate memory for jumbo frames during initialization.

sk%d: watchdog timeout The device has stopped responding to the network, or there is a problem with the network connection (cable).

SEE ALSO
arp(4), ifmedia(4), miibus(4), netintro(4), ng_ether(4), vlan(4), ifconfig(8) XaQti XMAC II datasheet, http://www.xaqti.com. SysKonnect GEnesis programming manual, http://www.syskonnect.com.

HISTORY
The sk device driver first appeared in FreeBSD 3.0.

AUTHORS
The sk driver was written by Bill Paul <wpaul@ctr.columbia.edu>.