vr0 does not work after lots of troubleshooting

loveydovey

loveydovey

I have an old desktop with a VIA Rhine III PCI ethernet card. The kernel modules are compiled in, dmesg says vr0 is detected ok, no errors, ifconfig up, status: active, static ip, but no packets traverse the card. So weird.

The card is good because it worked with Linux. The cable is good because I use it with this laptop. Networking is good because I get internet on that desktop with a USB ethernet dongle. It's something with the vr0 card.

It also flashes green led very fast. So I tried to change media from auto 100baseTX full-duplex to set 100baseTX full-duplex. Then to half-duplex. Still same. Then to 10baseT full-duplex - and the green led stopped flashing and lit up steady green, but still no internet connectivity. The packet stats say no collisions, no errors, only 1 packet out and 1 packet in total.
 
That does sound like a bug. I don't have the hardware so I can't try to reproduce it. What version of Freebsd is this under?
 
Don't think it was ever a commonly used network card, so it's very much possible the driver has bugs. It's also quite an old driver, so it likely has a whole bunch of stale code.
Code: 
HISTORY
     The vr device driver first appeared in FreeBSD 3.0.
 
It's one file (plus a header file), not much to see. It did have some modifications done this year. But if nobody actually uses the card and driver it may very well compile properly yet fail to function.

src - FreeBSD source tree

cgit.freebsd.org cgit.freebsd.org
 
it has a sysctl to display stats
also if it does not spew timeout errors or other errors it means dma/irq works
so probably either the phy or the transceiver has a problem

i had such a card a billion years ago. integrated in an asus sff pc which also had a sis chipset / video card
last time it ran freebsd 7 ( i trashed it 2-3 years ago)
 
when i write arm drivers and they don't work and run out of ideas i dump hw registers with devmem2 from linux and freebsd and compare
saved me several times
dumping from devmem2 is not 100% reliable and ofcourse it does not work for i2c or mdio or such buses but it is better than nothing
 
Well, I have a VT6105/VT6106S [Rhine-III] on my old PC. It has 15.0-RELEASE-p1 and it works, I just tested it.
I needed some tricks with route because the machine isn't configured to use it, but it works, I post this message thru this card.

Before to imagine that the driver is bugged, you should inspect your network settings.
 
Jose said:
What version of Freebsd is this under?
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14.3 and 15.0.
covacat said:
well, happy hacking
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Haha, very funny.
SirDice said:
Don't think it was ever a commonly used network card, so it's very much possible the driver has bugs.
Click to expand...
Even on Linux it was a little funny acting...like, it'd take it a few seconds to get the connection going, whereas other ethernet cards are pretty instantaneous
Emrion said:
some tricks with route because the machine isn't configured to use it
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What tricks?
.
 
Interesting, I hadn't heard of that VIA nic before. Without meaning to disparage the idea of debugging the driver, perhaps it would be simpler overall to shell out a few dollars and get something like a cheap intel PRO/1000 card to get the machine onto the lan with the minimum effort? Those are known to work well with freebsd. For example, a PCI Dell PRO/1000 GT can be had for minimal cost on ebay, for example this one is 13 UKP/$17


Sometimes it's easier just to change the hardware :)
 
blackbird9 said:
perhaps it would be simpler overall to shell out a few dollars and get something like a cheap intel PRO/1000 card
Click to expand...
I wish I could, bu I can't right now. I will try to see if I can get some wireless adapter going temporarily.

I bought this stupid ethernet pci card from a computer "scrap" store some years ago because it was like 1 buck and I was, like, "Yay." 💔

Interestingly, the integrated NIC on the motherboard is dead, it lights up when I plug the cable in, but it does not get detected in pciconf at all.
 
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