ixgbe(7D) Devices ixgbe(7D)NAMEixgbe - Intel 10Gb PCI Express NIC Driver
SYNOPSIS
/dev/ixgbe*
DESCRIPTION
The ixgbe 10 Gigabit Ethernet driver is a multi-threaded, loadable,
clonable, GLD-based STREAMS driver supporting the Data Link Provider
Interface, dlpi(7P), on Intel 10-Gigabit PCI Express Ethernet con‐
trollers.
The ixgbe driver functions include controller initialization, frame
transmit and receive, promiscuous and multicast support, and error
recovery and reporting.
The ixgbe driver and hardware support auto-negotiation, a protocol
specified by the IEEE 802.3ae specification.
The ixgbe driver also supports the SRIOV capability on Intel 82599 and
later 10 Gigabit Ethernet controllers. In SR-IOV enabled mode, it sup‐
ports the Physical Function of the controller.
APPLICATION PROGRAMMING INTERFACE
The cloning character-special device, /dev/ixgbe, is used to access all
Intel 10 -Gigabit PCI Express Ethernet devices installed within the
system.
The ixgbe driver is managed by the dladm(1M) command line utility,
which allows VLANs to be defined on top of ixgbe instances and for
ixgbe instances to be aggregated. See dladm(1M) for more details.
You must send an explicit DL_ATTACH_REQ message to associate the opened
stream with a particular device (PPA). The PPA ID is interpreted as an
unsigned integer data type and indicates the corresponding device
instance (unit) number. The driver returns an error (DL_ERROR_ACK) if
the PPA field value does not correspond to a valid device instance num‐
ber for the system. The device is initialized on first attach and de-
initialized (stopped) at last detach.
The values returned by the driver in the DL_INFO_ACK primitive in
response to your DL_INFO_REQ are:
o Maximum SDU is 16366.
o Minimum SDU is 0.
o DLSAP address length is 8.
o MAC type is DL_ETHER.
o SAP (Service Access Point) length value is -2, meaning the
physical address component is followed immediately by a
2-byte SAP component within the DLSAP address.
o Broadcast address value is the Ethernet/IEEE broadcast
address (FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF).
Once in the DL_ATTACHED state, you must send a DL_BIND_REQ
to associate a particular SAP with the stream.
CONFIGURATION
By default, the ixgbe driver performs auto-negotiation to select the
link speed and mode. Link speed and mode can only be 10000 Mbps full-
duplex. See the IEEE802.3 standard for more information.
In SR-IOV mode, the following device specific parameters are exported
by the ixgbe driver to supprot SR-IOV feature.
max-config-vfs This is a read-only parameter describing the maximum
number of VFs that can be configured. A value of 63
is exported to override the information that is found
in PCI config space of the 82599 device. difference
is due to the fact that ixgbe driver utilizes hard‐
ware resources to provide a functional PF device
along with VFs. parameter enables external management
software to limit the number of configured VFs to be
63 or less.
max-vlans This is a read-only parameter describing the maximum
number of VLAN filters supported for PF and VFs. As
the 82599 supports 64 VLAN filters for PF and VFs all
together, a value of 64 is exported. parameter allows
external management software entities to limit the
number of VLAN filters configured to be with the sup‐
ported limit.
max-vf-mtu This is a read-only parameter describing the maximum
MTU allowed for a VF. A value of 1500 is exported to
indicate the 82599 VF hardware limit. parameter
allows external management software to limit the max‐
imum VF MTU setting to be within the described limit.
unicast-slots This is a tunable parameter that allows the reserva‐
tion of unicast mac-address slots to a PF or a VF. A
total of 128 unicast mac-address slots are present in
a 82599 device instance, out which one mac-address
slot for the PF and each VFs is always reserved. The
rest of the unicast mac-address slots can be reserved
for the PF or VFs through this parameter. If not, the
rest unicast mac-address slots are shared and allo‐
cated on first come first serve basis.
pvid-exclusive This is a read-only parameter describing the hardware
attribute that vlan IDs and port vlan ID are mutual
exclusive on a 82599 device. Users cannot set vlan
IDs successfully when port vlan ID has been set. Vice
versa, users cannot set port vlan ID successfully
when vlan IDs have been set.
FILES
/dev/ixgbe* Special character device.
/kernel/drv/ixgbe 32-bit device driver (x86).
/kernel/drv/amd64/ixgbe 64-bit device driver (x86).
/kernel/drv/sparcv9/ixgbe 64-bit device driver (SPARC).
/kernel/drv/ixgbe.conf Configuration file.
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:
┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ ATTRIBUTE TYPE ATTRIBUTE VALUE │
│Availability SUNWcsu │
│Architecture SPARC, x86 │
│Interface Stability Committed │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
SEE ALSOdladm(1M), netstat(1M), driver.conf(4), attributes(5), streamio(7I),
dlpi(7P)
Writing Device Drivers
STREAMS Programming Guide
IEEE 802.3ae Specificiation, IEEE - 2002
SunOS 5.10 20 Jul 2011 ixgbe(7D)