3. Which driver should I use?

3.1.1. Kernel Module Aliases and Parameters

Most drivers accept arguments in the form of module paramters (with the exception of the special case of PCMCIA, which is fully described below).

Kernel modules are specified in the file /etc/conf.modules or /etc/modules.conf depending upon which version of modutils you've got.

You can directly modify this file or use the tools builtin to your specific distribution. These distribution specific tools are beyond the scope of this document, but you can always directly modify the modules.conf file by hand to get things up and running and then figure out how your distribution handles these files. For example, Debian has several files in the /etc/modutils directory and from these builds the modules.conf file.

Kernel modules aliases are utilized to associate a particular name with a kernel module.

For token ring, this is used to assign drivers for each of the token ring interfaces so that the system scripts know which driver to insert when you bring an interface up.

The format of the alias lines are:

alias module_name interface

Usually, the only line you'll need for the token ring networking would be something like:

alias olympic tr0

This binds the olympic driver to the tr0 interface so when you type

ifconfig tr0 up

if the tr0 interface is not already loaded, the system will insert the olympic driver, which in turn will find the network card and create the tr0 network device.

Kernel modules parameters are specified in the following format:

options module_name parameter_1=XXX [parameter2=YYY ...]

Where the modules_name is the name of the driver, i.e. olympic, ibmtr, 3c359 and the ` parameters are those available for each driver. See either the following sections for driver specifics or check out the drivers source code.

For example, if you wanted to set the Olympic driver to 16 mbps operation and with a default buffer size of 8192 bytes, you would use the following line:

options olympic ringspeed=16 pkt_buf_sz=8192

3.1.2. IBMTR Driver

IBM Tropic Chipset Based Token Ring Adapters

This is the original token ring driver in the kernel and supports almost all adapters that use the IBM Tropic chipset, including the IBM ISA, ISA/Pnp, and a multitude of adapters from other manufacturers.

The IBM Turbo 16/4 ISA/PnP adapter will, in fact, work fine with the ibmtr driver. In older drivers you had to run the card in Auto 16/4 compatability mode. The simplest way to set this is to use the LANAID disks sent with the card and run the command:

LANAIDC /FAST=AUTO16

You should then use LANAIDC or LANAID to configure the card according to documentation. The latest drivers for the Turbo Adapters will recognize these adapters and configure them straight out of the box. You may have to either turn off isapnp support in the kernel or modify your isapnp.conf file to enable the adapter.

Options:

Perusal of the ibmtr source code may leave you to believe that the adapter can take three parameters, however, in reality the driver doesn't take any. These parameters are a hang over from the early stages of the driver and are only intended to be used to force the driver to only test restricted Еddresses when looking for adapters. The information on these options are included here for completeness only.

• io: Specify the I/O ports that the driver will check for the presence of any cards. All Tropic based ISA adapters, or adapters emulating the ISA cards will be found on either port 0xA20 or 0xA24. If you know that your adapter is configured for 0xA24 and/or that probing on port 0xA20 will cause problems with your machine, use io to force the driver to check a specific port only.

  The Turbo adapters (including the confusingly named latest Auto 16/4 cards) can have their io regions located anywhere permitted by the PnP specification. This location is found using the new turbo detection code and no parameters are required.

• irq & mem: The two options were used to tell the driver exactly which irq to use and where the shared ram for the adapter could be found. These two options are now totally redundant in the driver as the interrupt line and the location of the shared ram is obtained directly by interrogating the adapter.

3.1.3. Olympic Driver

IBM PCI Pit/Pit-Phy/Olympic chipset based token ring cards

Options:

The driver accepts four options: ringspeed, pkt_buf_sz, message_level and network_monitor.

These options can be specified differently for each card found, i.e if you have two olympic adapters in your machine and want to assign a ring speed of 16mbps to the first adapter, but a ring speed of 4mbps to the second adapter, your options line would read:

options olympic ringspeed=16,4

However, it should be noted that the driver assigns value to each adapter in the order they are discovered╦ which is usually the order there are present on the pci bus. A little trial and error may be required to be certain which adapter is receiving which configuration option.

• ringspeed: Has one of three settings 0 (default), 4 or 16. 0 will make the card autosense the ringspeed and join at the appropriate speed, this will be the default option for most people. 4 or 16 allow you to explicitly force the card to operate at a certain speed. The card will fail if you try to insert it at the wrong speed. (Although some hubs will allow this so be *very* careful). The main purpose for explicitly setting the ring speed is for when the card is first on the ring. In autosense mode, if the card cannot detect any active monitors on the ring it will not open, so you must re-init the card at the appropriate speed. Unfortunately at present the only way of doing this is rmmod and insmod which is a bit tough if it is compiled in the kernel. The driver does support 100 mbps full duplex operation. This is automatically detected by the adapter when connected to an appropriate switch.

• pkt_buf_sz: This is this initial receive buffer allocation size. This will default to 4096 if no value is entered. You may increase performance of the driver by setting this to a value larger than the network packet size, although the driver now re-sizes buffers based on MTU settings as well.

• message_level: Controls level of messages created by the driver. Defaults to 0 which only displays start-up and critical messages. Presently any non-zero value will display all soft messages as well. NB This does not turn debugging messages on, that must be done by modified the source code.

• network_monitor: Any non-zero value will provide a quasi network monitoring mode. All unexpected MAC frames (beaconing etc.) will be received by the driver and the source and destination addresses printed. Also an entry will be added in /proc/net called olympic_tr%d, where tr%d is the registered device name, i.e tr0, tr1, etc. This displays low level information about the configuration of the ring and the adapter. This feature has been designed for network administrators to assist in the diagnosis of network / ring problems. (This used to OLYMPIC_NETWORK_MONITOR, but has now changed to allow each adapter to be configured differently and to alleviate the necessity to re-compile olympic to turn the option on).

3.1.4. Lanstreamer Driver

IBM PCI/MCA Lanstreamer chipset based token ring cards

Options:

The driver accepts three options: ringspeed, pkt_buf_sz, message_level and network_monitor.

These options can be specified differently for each card found, i.e if you have two olympic adapters in your machine and want to assign a ring speed of 16mbps to the first adapter, but a ring speed of 4mbps to the second adapter, your options line would read:

options lanstreamer ringspeed=16,4

However, it should be noted that the driver assigns value to each adapter in the order they are discovered╦ which is usually the order there are present on the pci/mca bus. A little trial and error may be required to be certain which adapter is receiving which configuration option.

• ringspeed: Has one of three settings 0 (default), 4 or 16. 0 will make the card autosense the ringspeed and join at the appropriate speed, this will be the default option for most people. 4 or 16 allow you to explicitly force the card to operate at a certain speed. The card will fail if you try to insert it at the wrong speed. (Although some hubs will allow this so be *very* careful). The main purpose for explicitly setting the ring speed is for when the card is first on the ring. In autosense mode, if the card cannot detect any active monitors on the ring it will not open, so you must re-init the card at the appropriate speed. Unfortunately at present the only way of doing this is rmmod and insmod which is a bit tough if it is compiled in the kernel. switch.

• pkt_buf_sz: This is this initial receive buffer allocation size. This will default to 4096 if no value is entered. You may increase performance of the driver by setting this to a value larger than the network packet size, although the driver now re-sizes buffers based on MTU settings as well.

• message_level: Controls level of messages created by the driver. Defaults to 0 which only displays start-up and critical messages. Presently any non-zero value will display all soft messages as well. NB This does not turn debugging messages on, that must be done by modified the source code.

3.1.5. 3Com 3C359 Driver

3COM PCI TOKEN LINK VELOCITY XL TOKEN RING CARDS

Currently the 3c359 driver in not included in the standard kernel source. To utlize the driver, you must download the driver from the Linux Token Ring Project web site and patch your kernel.

Once you've downloaded the file, you can patch your kernel with the following commands:

cd /usr/src/linux patch -p1 < 3c359-2.4.16.patch

or, if the patch file is gzipped:

zcat 3c359-2.4.16.patch | patch -p1

Then just run make config|menuconfig|xconfig and select the 3c359 driver from the token ring drivers section of the kernel configuration and then compile and install the kernel and/or modules as usual.

Options:

The driver accepts three options: ringspeed, pkt_buf_sz, message_level.

These options can be specified differently for each card found, i.e if you have two olympic adapters in your machine and want to assign a ring speed of 16mbps to the first adapter, but a ring speed of 4mbps to the second adapter, your options line would read:

options 3c359 ringspeed=16,4

However, it should be noted that the driver assigns value to each adapter in the order they are discovered╦ which is usually the order there are present on the pci bus. A little trial and error may be required to be certain which adapter is receiving which configuration option.

• ringspeed: Has one of three settings 0 (default), 4 or 16. 0 will make the card autosense the ringspeed and join at the appropriate speed, this will be the default option for most people. 4 or 16 allow you to explicitly force the card to operate at a certain speed. The card will fail if you try to insert it at the wrong speed. (Although some hubs will allow this so be *very* careful). The main purpose for explicitly setting the ring speed is for when the card is first on the ring. In autosense mode, if the card cannot detect any active monitors on the ring it will open at the same speed as its last opening. This can be harardous if this speed does not match the speed you want the ring to operate at.

• pkt_buf_sz: This is this initial receive buffer allocation size. This will default to 4096 if no value is entered. You may increase performance of the driver by setting this to a value larger than the network packet size, although the driver now re-sizes buffers based on MTU settings as well.

• message_level: Controls level of messages created by the driver. Defaults to 0 which only displays start-up and critical messages. Presently any non-zero value will display all soft messages as well. NB This does not turn debugging messages on, that must be done by modified the source code.

3.1.6. SysKonnect adapters

Information for the SysKonnect Token Ring ISA/PCI Adapter is courtesy Jay Schulist <jschlst@samba.org>

The Linux SysKonnect Token Ring driver works with the SysKonnect TR4/16(+) ISA, SysKonnect TR4/16(+) PCI, SysKonnect TR4/16 PCI, and older revisions of the SK NET TR4/16 ISA card.

Latest information on this driver can be obtained on the Linux-SNA WWW site. Please point your browser to: http://www.linux-sna.org

Important information to be noted:

• 1. Adapters can be slow to open (~20 secs) and close (~5 secs), please be patient.

• 2. This driver works very well when autoprobing for adapters. Why even think about those nasty io/int/dma settings of modprobe when the driver will do it all for you!

This driver is rather simple to use. Select Y to Token Ring adapter support in the kernel configuration. A choice for SysKonnect Token Ring adapters will appear. This drives supports all SysKonnect ISA and PCI adapters. Choose this option. I personally recommend compiling the driver as a module (M), but if you you would like to compile it staticly answer Y instead.

This driver supports multiple adapters without the need to load multiple copies of the driver. You should be able to load up to 7 adapters without any kernel modifications, if you are in need of more please contact the maintainer of this driver.

Load the driver either by lilo/loadlin or as a module. When a module using the following command will suffice for most:

# modprobe sktr

This will produce output similar to the following: (Output is user specific)

sktr.c: v1.01 08/29/97 by Christoph Goos tr0: SK NET TR 4/16 PCI found at 0x6100, using IRQ 17. tr1: SK NET TR 4/16 PCI found at 0x6200, using IRQ 16. tr2: SK NET TR 4/16 ISA found at 0xa20, using IRQ 10 and DMA 5.

Now just setup the device via ifconfig and set and routes you may have. After this you are ready to start sending some tokens.

Below is the setting for the SK NET TR 4/16 ISA adapters

*************************** *** C O N T E N T S *** *************************** 1) Location of DIP-Switch W1 2) Default settings 3) DIP-Switch W1 description ============================================================== CHAPTER 1 LOCATION OF DIP-SWITCH ============================================================== +------------------------------------------------------------------+ |+------+ +-----+ +---+ | ||------| W1 +-----+ +----+ | | | ||------| | | | | +---+ ||------| +-----------+ +----+ | | | || ||------| | | +---+ +---+ +---+ ||------| | TMS380C26 | | | | ||------| | | +---+ |-+ |+------+ | | | | | +-----------+ | | | | | | |-+ | | | | | | | | +------------+----------------+--+-----------------------+---------+ +----------------+ +-----------------------+

============================================================== CHAPTER 2 DEFAULT SETTINGS ============================================================== W1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 +------------------------------+ | ON X | | OFF X X X X X X X | +------------------------------+ W1.1 = ON Adapter drives address lines SA17..19 W1.2 - 1.5 = OFF BootROM disabled W1.6 - 1.8 = OFF I/O address 0A20h

============================================================== CHAPTER 3 DIP SWITCH W1 DESCRIPTION ============================================================== +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+ ON | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | +---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+ OFF |AD | BootROM Addr. | I/O | +-+-+-------+-------+-----+-----+ | | | | | +------ 6 7 8 | | ON ON ON 1900h | | ON ON OFF 0900h | | ON OFF ON 1980h | | ON OFF OFF 0980h | | OFF ON ON 1b20h | | OFF ON OFF 0b20h | | OFF OFF ON 1a20h | | OFF OFF OFF 0a20h (+) | | | | | +-------- 2 3 4 5 | OFF x x x disabled (+) | ON ON ON ON C0000 | ON ON ON OFF C4000 | ON ON OFF ON C8000 | ON ON OFF OFF CC000 | ON OFF ON ON D0000 | ON OFF ON OFF D4000 | ON OFF OFF ON D8000 | ON OFF OFF OFF DC000 | | +----- 1 OFF adapter does NOT drive SA<17..19> ON adapter drives SA<17..19> (+) (+) means default setting

3.1.7. PCMCIA

3.1.8. Madge Supplied Drivers

Madge released 2.31 of their driver in 1999 and 2.41 in late 2001. Both drivers can be downloaded from the Madge web site and the 2.41 driver is also available from the Linux Token Ring Project web site.

Once the drivers have been downloaded, see the README file that comes with the drivers for instruction on how to built and install the drivers. The only other issue some people find with the drivers is a failure to build the tool chain due to an incorrect version of the newt libraries. If you get a compiler error relating to newt.h change the madge-source/include/mtok/config.h file so that the #define NEWNEWT line reads:

#define NEWNEWT 1

This will ensure the tools use the correct newt libraries during the build process.

A patch is available from the Linux Token Ring Project web site for the 2.31 drivers to enable them to work with the 2.4.x kernels.

3.1.9. Olicom Drivers

Back when Olicom were still in business they did produce a Linux driver that does actually work. Trying to find the driver these days is a bit tough. If the ftp.olicom.com site is still up and running, the driver can be found there.

The driver is a combination of GPL source code and proprietary binary low level code. The driver only works with the 2.0.36 and 2.2.x kernels. It should be possible to port this driver to the 2.4.x kernels...