Ethernet driver port help

[Robert Ewald]

I just started looking at porting an ethernet driver from Linux over to Be
and have a couple questions. (I've not written a driver before so this is
more of an educational exercise, don't expect anything production quality.)

I'm not sure if I'm installing the driver properly. I put the file in the
/boot/......./drivers/bin, and link to it from ..../drivers/dev/net but I
don't think it's getting loaded at boot time. The interface is not listed in
the Network preferences panel and I can only get my debug output to appear
if I do an 'ls' on the /dev/net directory. Hitting the Restart Networking
button doesn't help.

Is it possible to re-load the driver without rebooting? It strikes me as the
kind of thing BeOS would be able to do.

For much further down the line, is there documentation about what the
write()/read() functions are expecting in the buffers? Should this be the
data payload section of the ethernet packet? the whole frame ready for the
wire?

Thanks

Rob

[Ronny Schoebel]

You should first take a look at the EtherPCI driver that's available as
sample code. If you don't have it, look for it on
ftp.be.com/pub/samples/.
Your driver seems to be installed correctly, it's perfectly normal that
the driver only gets loaded when you do an ls since they're loaded on
demand. Network drivers are accompanied by an net_server add-on which
provides the interface to the Network Preferences panel. A sample
net_server add-on is included in the EtherPCI code.

--
There's no secret to balance. You just have to feel the waves.

Darwi Odrade
Ronny.

[Nathan Whitehorn]

"Robert Ewald" <r-e...@home.com> wrote in message news:<HjEQ6.8543$mG4.3...@news1.mntp1.il.home.com>...

> I just started looking at porting an ethernet driver from Linux over to Be
> and have a couple questions. (I've not written a driver before so this is
> more of an educational exercise, don't expect anything production quality.)
>
> I'm not sure if I'm installing the driver properly. I put the file in the
> /boot/......./drivers/bin, and link to it from ..../drivers/dev/net but I
> don't think it's getting loaded at boot time. The interface is not listed in
> the Network preferences panel and I can only get my debug output to appear
> if I do an 'ls' on the /dev/net directory. Hitting the Restart Networking
> button doesn't help.

The BeOS doesn't load the driver until someone looks in its directory.
To make the net_server see it, you will also need to write a
net_server add-on like in the EtherPCI example code.

> Is it possible to re-load the driver without rebooting? It strikes me as the
> kind of thing BeOS would be able to do.

Yes. It does this automatically. The net_server add-on will only be
reloaded when networking is restarted, however.

> For much further down the line, is there documentation about what the
> write()/read() functions are expecting in the buffers? Should this be the
> data payload section of the ethernet packet? the whole frame ready for the
> wire?

This will be the entire frame ready for the wire minus the end
checksum. Your card may do the checksum in hardware.