Using SUN parts in my X86 Linux machine

[brianl703]

I read somewhere that Sun Quad Fast Ethernet cards (X1034a option) will work in an X86 machine with the Linux driver. I'd been thinking about getting a multiport Ethernet card to save PCI slots in my Linux machine (it only has 4).

The SUN cards are not very expensive on Ebay ($8-$15 plus shipping) so I bought a couple.

I just installed the card in my Linux machine today and it works fine. My Linux machine is a dual PIII550. Despite the card being a 64-bit PCIX card, it works fine in a 32-bit slot. Here's the kernel message where it's detected when I insmod the sunhme driver:


sunhme.c:v2.01 26/Mar/2002 David S. Miller ([email protected])
eth2-5: Quattro HME (PCI/CheerIO) 10/100baseT Ethernet DEC 21153 PCI Bridge
eth2: Quattro HME slot 0 (PCI/CheerIO) 10/100baseT Ethernet 08:00:20:xx:xx:14
eth3: Quattro HME slot 1 (PCI/CheerIO) 10/100baseT Ethernet 08:00:20:xx:xx:15
eth4: Quattro HME slot 2 (PCI/CheerIO) 10/100baseT Ethernet 08:00:20:xx:xx:16
eth5: Quattro HME slot 3 (PCI/CheerIO) 10/100baseT Ethernet 08:00:20:xx:xx:17

I censored the ethernet addresses. I plugged it into a spare PC with Windows XP on it to test it and XP detects the card but can't find a driver for it. I was going to boot it with Knoppix but since my CD-ROM drive wouldn't eject before XP started, XP detected the card and asked for a driver.

I looked for an XP driver for this card but I couldn't find one. Not surprising.

It works great with Linux which is what I wanted it for.

 

[simple_gifts]

So I guess linux supports hardware that XP doesn't

Are you going to try to get bonded networking running? A couple guys at work spent a while trying to get it working, problem was they never modified the iptables to accommodate the new interface; DOH! It was working, but they were blocking all the traffic leaving the machine....

 

[brianl703]

No, I'm just using it as 4 individual network interfaces right now. I have my wireless access point connected to one port and my 10/100 switch connected to the other. I have a gigabit switch that is connected to an Intel E1000 gigabit card installed in that machine as well. That leaves two ports free for whatever else I decide to use (if I ever get a roommate, for example, I can give them their own port and firewall it so their stuff can't touch mine).

Doing that also freed up a port on the gigabit switch that was being used to connect to the 10/100 switch. And since almost everything on the gigabit switch is now actually gigabit, I can run jumbo frames on the gigabit network for more throughput.

 

[simple_gifts]

Not sure if jumbo frames is another term for TCP window scaling. If so be vigilant of this

http://lwn.net/Articles/92727/

We were bitten by this from a appliance firewall @ a vendor site advertised scaling but then didn't actually do it;

 

[brianl703]

Jumbo frames are ethernet packets larger than 1500 bytes. On a gigabit network it can increase throughput if packets larger than 1500 bytes are allowed to be used.