Intel Ethernet PRO/100+ experience with solaris 8

Apparently, there are a bunch of intel "etherexpress" cards that are compatible with the solaris driver "iprb". If they dont quite work for you [wont "plumb"], then you may like to know about the following trick:
You can add an explicit entry for them in /etc/driver_aliases.

First, you need to find out the pci ID of the card. Intel's vendor ID is 8086. So the card's ID will be 8086,something

The quick way:

Run my prtdev script.
prtconf -pv | prtdev

The long way:

Look thorugh the rather long output of "prtconf -pv" to find your card. Then look through the associated "model:", "name:", and "compatible:" fields.

Then, once (if) you have found an 8086 identifier, you need to add it to /etc/driver_aliases.

[Note: "8086,0" is an identifier that has been reported to show up in rare cases. It is not valid. Look for a different one]

To use the latest cheap "PRO/100+ Management Adapter" card as an example, add


 iprb "pci8086,c"
to /etc/driver_aliases, if there isn't an entry for it already in there.

If you then do "drvconfig;devlinks" you should then have the card available to you, as verified by

 ifconfig iprb0 plumb
Or the safer was is the old "touch /reconfigure; init 6"

See the regular sun documentation on how to configure an ethernet interface from here on.

Usually, you would want to do


 echo yourhostname >/etc/hostname.iprb0 ; sync ; reboot

For other hardware install tricks, you might want to look at my 'new hardware' advice page


Written by: Philip Brown
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