[etherlab-users] Kernel question

[Erwin Burgstaller]

I already sent a reply yesterday, but got hung, because of the
attachment, so I've uploaded the attachment here instead:
http://rapidshare.com/files/351770968/e1000e-support-2.6.29.tar.bz2.html

* Mon, Feb 15, 2010 - 17:53:57 +0100, John Erlandsson - john at lunatech.se:
> Hi!
> 
> I'm new to etherlab, and in the process of setting up my first master.
> 
> My system.
> OS: Fedora 12
> Kernel: 2.6.31.5-127
> Ethernet card: Intel Corporation 82567LF Gigabit Network Connection (rev 03)

The Problem with the e1000 is, from at least kernel 2.6.29 on, there are
two drivers, the e1000 and the e1000e. For the e1000e there's no
implementation for the EtherCAT master and the current e1000 does not
work anymore for our version of the e1000 NIC. But the old driver does
still work in the current kernels with some adaption to the new kernel
structures, the e1000e has just some improvements for Gigabit networks,
which isn't used by EtherCAT anyway.

So we're running kernel 2.6.29 with a little trick. I simply changed the
code of the EtherCAT enabled driver for e1000, so it shows up as
ec_e1000e and the Makefile for building ec_e1000e.ko So the kernel loads
e1000e.ko and at start of the master it's replaced by ec_e1000e.ko

I've attached all the files you'll need for kernel 2.6.29 and the
EtherCAT-Master 1.4. Maybe it will work with 2.6.31 too, I don't know.

You still have to run configure with e1000-enabled=yes and not with
e1000e, but in /etc/sysconfig/ethercat you'll write: 

DEVICE_MODULES="e1000e"

If you have an Ethernet adapter, for which the kernel still loads
the older driver, the e1000, the attached sources will work too, but
you'll have to change all occurences of e1000e in the code back to
e1000.

In terms of the current version (1.5?), I've found it doesn't run
stable. EoE doesn't work, the box crashes within 15 up to 30 seconds if
a EoE enabled device is on the bus and I had some problems in releasing
the master, also with EoE enabled. Without EoE it seems to work though.

Erwin

-- 
Erwin Burgstaller