[Etherlab-users] Enable normal Ethernet devices with native e1000e driver

[Douglas Lopez]

Hello IgH Etherlab,

First off, I would like to thank you for your hard work with etherlab.  I found the manual very useful and was able to implement IgH ethercat master to run my slaves without too many issues, and I am new to plc development in general.  I apologize in advance if this is the incorrect place to contact, if so, could you please redirect me?

My issue is that while the ec master service is running, the ec_e1000e driver disables all other ethernet devices on my machine that are not configured for an ethercat master in the etc/sysconfig/ethercat file.  While the etherCAT master service is running, ifconfig lists only the network device configured for the master.

After rereading the v1.5.2 manual Section 4: Dedicated Hardware, I am unsure if the native e1000e driver will be able to use one device (ex:  eth2) for etherCAT master while using  others (ex: eth0, eth1) as "normal" ethernet devices.  However, Section 4.2:  Ethernet and EtherCAT Devices indicates that the native driver is "one networking driver for EtherCAT and non-EtherCAT devices" which seems contrary to the point made in Dedicated Hardware.  Section 4.2 does not indicate that the non-EtherCAT devices will be available while the service is running, so maybe the fault is in my understanding.

Is it possible to start the master service for one ethernet device (eth2) and then use the other ethernet devices to ssh, with the native e1000e driver?  Or does activating the master service remove all devices from the network stack so that only the master device is operational?

If this is not possible due to "dedicated hardware" for the native driver, after reading section 4.3: Device Activation, the generic driver should be able to handle this feature?  If I recall correctly, the generic driver will not work for RT applications, so I will have to lose Xenomai.

System Specs:
Linux version:  3.2.21
Xenomai:  2.6.21
Distribution:  AntiX 16 (Debian 8.5 Jessie)

Master version: 1.5.2
Ethernet Driver:  e1000e

Thank you very much for your time,
Doug


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