GPL nvidia ethernet driver coming!

[_tf_]

good news! :dance:
straight from the lkml
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=106763478023954&w=2


This is the wrong mailing list to ask who's afraid of Halloween, thus
I ask: Who's afraid of driver that was written without specs?

Attached is forcedeth: A new driver for the ethernet interface of the
NVIDIA nForce chipset, licensed under GPL.

The driver was written without support from NVIDIA, it's the result of
a cleanroom development:
Carl-Daniel and Andrew reverse engineered the nvnet driver and wrote a
specification, Manfred wrote the driver based on the spec.

This release it intended for developers, it's alpha quality: normal
network traffic could work, although slow due to incomplete interrupt
handling. It does work on two nForce 2 systems, nForce and nForce 3
are untested.

Try it yourself, but don't complain if something breaks. Note that
the driver generates quite a lot of debug output.

Manfred Spraul
Carl-Daniel Hailfinger
Andrew de Quincey

[TheOneKEA]

Better link:

http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0310.3/1403.html

[_tf_]

or just head to
http://lkml.org/lkml/2003/10/31/109

:)

[TheOneKEA]

Yeah, but I like Hypermail better........ :afro:

Anyway, on-topic: Would a mod consider stickying this? Once it gets noticed people will probably be asking after it, and having a single thread will prevent a lot of me-too threads.

[Zenikase]

It's just an Ethernet driver *yawn*. If we can get a GPL'ed SoundStorm driver, things will become a bit more interesting.

[TheOneKEA]

Yeah, but it's a GPLed Ethernet driver, which means that when someone with an nForce2 board who was 3l33t hacker skills notices this code..... he's going to fix it.

And then it will be a stable GPLed Ethernet driver. I've heard that the nvnet drivers are not necessarily stable....

[connyosis]

This is really nice. Hopefully it will be integrated into the 2.6 kernel (And 2.4 as well I guess) so you don't have to download the closed driver from nvidia. Personally I think it's really weak of Nvidia not to release specs. For Gods sake it's a NIC driver! Nvidia is primarely into graphics cards, why these specs cannot be relased is beyond me.

[TheOneKEA]

Andrew Morton has integrated the new nForce/nForce2 GPL ethernet driver into his 2.6.0-test9-mm2 patchset, for anyone who wishes to try it out.

You can get it from here:

ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm/patches/2.6/2.6.0-test9/2.6.0-test9-mm2/2.6.0-test9-mm2.gz

To apply the patch to a standard 2.6.0-test9 source tree, cd into the root of the tree, run the make clean command, then run this command:

zcat /path/to/patchset/2.6.0-test9-mm2.gz | patch -p1

Then run make xconfig and go configure the driver under the Networking -> Network devices -> 10/100 Ethernet menu.

[ziphnor]

Im using this driver in Gentoo Linux(2.6.0-test9 patched as mentioned above). I have just installed it, but it seems to work great, i have downloaded loads of stuff using it and havent noticed any problems.

Im using a Soltek FRN2-L nforce2 motherboard.

[TheOneKEA]

Andrew Morton said that the author of the driver, Manfred Spraul, wants feedback on the workings of the driver. Find out Manfred's address and tell him about your experiences with the driver.

[ziphnor]

Good idea, just sent him an email, with what little information i can provide.

[TheOneKEA]

Linkage: http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0311.1/0000.html

For those of you who aren't ready to jump to 2.6.

[shassard]

Here's a link to Andrew's broken out patch for the GPL nForce ethernet driver (forcedeth). I can apply it fairly cleanly to a bitkeeper kernel (2.6.0-test9-bk19).

ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm/patches/2.6/2.6.0-test9/2.6.0-test9-mm3/broken-out/forcedeth.patch

It's definitely nice to have forcedeth compiled statically into my kernel.

[blueworm]

OK, we have fixed the last known issue (oops on rmmod) in 0.18 and forcedeth should be at least as good as nvnet right now.
Download the latest version here: http://www.hailfinger.org/carldani/linux/patches/forcedeth/

Credits:
Manfred Spraul (driver author)
Carl-Daniel Hailfinger (reverse engineering, 2.4 compat)
Andrew de Quincey (reverse engineering)

[TheOneKEA]

Again, /methinks this thread may someday be stickied. Or renamed to something more generic if an ALSA SOundStorm driver pops up.......

[blueworm]

I wonder what nvidias opinion is regarding forcedeth???
Anyhow I have'nt seen any moderators around lately...
Maybe this forum has been abandoned...
through lack of interest.
Anyhow Moderator "Please sticky"

[mariuz]

i'am waiting for a 2.4.x patch maybe ...

[blueworm]

Click on the link I posted earlier and you will find a 2.4.X patch also

[TheOneKEA]

Originally posted by blueworm
I wonder what nvidias opinion is regarding forcedeth???
Anyhow I have'nt seen any moderators around lately...
Maybe this forum has been abandoned...
through lack of interest.
Anyhow Moderator "Please sticky"

If you're concerned, try PM'ing one of the mods of this forum.

As for NVIDIA's opinion, as long as this driver contains no code from NVIDIA's closed-source driver (meaning that it's fully clean-roomed), their only recourse is to deliberately break the driver by modifying the way the chip expects to be used.

Which is highly unlikely, and would probably sour the community's opinion of NVIDIA even further.

[blueworm]

I have no doubt that forcedeth is a clean room implementation.
I was think more on the lines of...
If nvidia had gpl'ed nvnet in the first place, nobody would have had to have gone to the trouble of having to write a driver from scratch...

[TheOneKEA]

Correct. It makes you wonder why they didn't GPL it in the first place. It probably had something to do with code that they borrowed from another company; if they did that, the restrictions and NDAs would prevent the code from being licensed under the GPL or a GPL-compatible license.

Anyway, we now have OSS NVIDIA IDE drivers and OSS NVIDIA Ethernet drivers. All we need now is ALSA NVIDIA SoundStorm drivers......

[mariuz]

Originally posted by blueworm
Click on the link I posted earlier and you will find a 2.4.X patch also
found it thanks let's see if it works with the fedora
kernel :)

http://www.hailfinger.org/carldani/linux/patches/forcedeth/

[bahamot]

forcedeth works well here :)

Fedore Core 1 - Linux 2.6.0-test9-mm4

[TheOneKEA]

http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0311.2/0638.html

This release is supposed to fix a slowdown with extreme network loads.

[bahamot]

no. the current released doesn't have the fixed yet.
it says the fixed is on testing
"* Possible system slowdown during periods of extreme network
load, fix is currently being tested."