[[cc'ed to thropejj as the lst person I know whotouched the PDQ code. tech-net
for discussion of refactoring ether_ifattach ]]
I'm nearing the end of reviving some DECstations and a few Vaxes. One of the
things I need/want for them is FDDI.
FDDI -- from the DEC "pdq"-based boards -- is the fastest, cheapest, and most
readily available 100Mbit tecnoligy for Turbochannel and EISA.
Turns out that fddi_ifattach() is broken in 8.2 and 9.2. It never
initialises sc_ec.ec_lock, which causes a panic the fisrt time the kernel tries
to add a multicast address to the interface. If you're using IPv6 (I don't; I
comment out "options INET6"), the panic occurs soon after boot when ipv6
discovery starts.
A minimal-touch fix is straightfoward; see attached diff against NetBSD-8.2.
(Should work against 9.2, haven't tested yet).
After applying this to 8.2 kernel source and rebuilding, I have a pair of
back-to-back, dual-attach DEFPAs (PCI FDDI).
I statically configure IP (v4) via /etc/ifconfig.fpa. They happily ping each
other, I can ssh across the FDDi interface, etc.
I would like to restore "pdq" (fpa, fea, fta, whatever a qbus attachment is; or
write one if none) to -current.
However, 10_RC4. doesn't even have if_fddisubr.c.
I don;t want to re-create the hack of having two different initialisers for the
IEE 802 (sic) [*] portions of "struct ethercom'.
A cleaner solution is to declare a new struct with all the members of 'struct
ethercom', except the 'struct ifnet ec_if;
'struct ethercom' then becomes a struct with two members: a struct ifnet, and
the new struct (struct iee802_common?).
That allows clean separation of code which manipulates the additions in today's
"struct ethercom', from code which also manipulates struct ifnet.
Thoughts? Anyone actively against PR'ing and (hopefully) minimal patches
NetBSD-8 and NetBSD-9?
Or against restoring FDDI to -current. (and perhaps backporting to NetBSD-10)?
If I have to, I can probably ship a pair of DEFTAs to an interested
contributor, if support from me is too tenuous.
[*] FDDI is not IEEE 802. But it's derived from Token Ring,, 802.5, which is.
And I suppose the refactoring I'm proposing here could add supporing Token
Ring, if anyone actively wanted to...
--Jonathan
fix-8.2-pdq.diff
Description: Binary data