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Full Discussion: The simplest network driver
Top Forums Programming The simplest network driver Post 302576009 by Corona688 on Wednesday 23rd of November 2011 11:28:56 AM
Old 11-23-2011
I haven't tried it, but my suspicion is that "probe" would be run for everything. Probing is how you detect non-plug-and-play things which don't advertise their presence, so PCI ID's wouldn't seem to apply.

But PCI drivers, usually not needing to probe, mostly don't probe at all. I think the PCI NE2000 network driver can, but has to be forced to do so by module options at load-time because blindly poking around at I/O addresses can be dangerous. Something unexpected might be occupying the bus resources it expects which could lock the PC or worse. On some IBM laptops, BIOS resources were found at addresses lm_sensors was expecting temperature sensors at, causing probes to brick the system!

One PCI ID for two drivers is a rare situation. Plug-and-play is supposed to be one model to one PCI ID, no ambiguity. If there's two drivers for the same ID, whichever gets loaded first wins. If they're built-in, whichever gets checked first on boot wins. Since the order of built-ins is arbitrary, if you want to control the order, you must make the drivers modules.

A rare situation but it still happens. There's two incompatible revisions of the old realtek 8139 network chip and two different linux kernel drivers -- 8139cp and 8139too. If you load the wrong one, it complains, and tells you to load the other in dmesg. Easy when they're modules, impossible when they're not.
Last edited by Corona688; 11-23-2011 at 12:38 PM..
 

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LEARN ABOUT NETBSD

ipw

IPW(4)							   BSD Kernel Interfaces Manual 						    IPW(4)

NAME

     ipw -- Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 IEEE 802.11 driver

SYNOPSIS

     ipw* at pci? dev ? function ?

DESCRIPTION

     The ipw driver provides support for the Intel PRO/Wireless 2100 MiniPCI network adapter.

     The Intel firmware requires acceptance of the End User License Agreement.	The full license text can be found in /lib-
     data/firmware/if_ipw/LICENSE.  The license is agreed to by setting the sysctl variable hw.ipw.accept_eula to 1.

     By default, the ipw driver configures the adapter for BSS operation (aka infrastructure mode).  This mode requires the use of an access
     point.

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

EXAMPLES

     Join an existing BSS network (i.e.: connect to an access point):

	   ifconfig ipw0 inet 192.168.0.20 netmask 0xffffff00

     Join a specific BSS network with network name ``my_net'':

	   ifconfig ipw0 inet 192.168.0.20 netmask 0xffffff00 nwid my_net

     Join a specific BSS network with 64 bits WEP encryption:

	   ifconfig ipw0 inet 192.168.0.20 netmask 0xffffff00 nwid my_net 
		   nwkey 0x1234567890

     Join a specific BSS network with 128bits WEP encryption:

	   ifconfig ipw0 inet 192.168.0.20 netmask 0xffffff00 nwid my_net 
		   nwkey 0x01020304050607080910111213

DIAGNOSTICS

     ipw%d: device timeout  The driver will reset the hardware.  This should not happen.

SEE ALSO

     an(4), awi(4), pci(4), wi(4), ifconfig(8), ipwctl(8)

     The IPW Web Page, http://damien.bergamini.free.fr/ipw/.

AUTHORS

     The ipw driver and this man page were written by Damien Bergamini <damien.bergamini@free.fr>.

BSD
								 November 7, 2008							       BSD
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