lan card driver files

[Peter Maddison]

I'm trying to install a 10/100 PCI card on a B160 running HP-UX 10.20. I can't find any information about which driver packages I should be installing.

ioscan -fnC lan
Class I H/W Path Driver S/W State H/W Type Description
========================================================================
lan 0 8/0/1/0 btlan5 CLAIMED INTERFACE PCI(10110019) -- 1
lan 1 8/16/6 lan2 CLAIMED INTERFACE Built-in LAN
/dev/diag/lan1 /dev/ether1 /dev/lan1

However sam will allow me to configure the card and I can ping the network it is confiugred for. So why does ioscan show no device files?

[A. Clay Stephenson]

The device node files are not used because 100BaseT or Gigabit ethernet cards (e.g.
btlan5) use DLPI (Data Link Protocol Interface) rather than LLA (Link Level Access).

You can search on DLPI and/ or LLA if you want to know more.

[Pete Randall]

Do you mean device files other than /dev/diag/lan1 /dev/ether1 /dev/lan1 ?

Pete

[Peter Maddison]

The thing is that I've exactly the same nic installed in another B160 this one shows the device files with ioscan:

Class I H/W Path Driver S/W State H/W Type Description
========================================================================
lan 0 8/0/2/0 btlan CLAIMED INTERFACE HP A5230A/B5509BA PCI 10/100Base-TX Addon
/dev/diag/lan0 /dev/ether0 /dev/lan0
lan 1 8/16/6 lan2 CLAIMED INTERFACE Built-in LAN
/dev/diag/lan1 /dev/ether1

The only difference is that this machine is running 11i. So why the difference?

[melvyn burnard]

So what OS version is on hte system that shows /dev/lanX?
10.20?
All the newer lan drivers now use DLPI instead of LLA stuff, and hence use /dev/dlpi.
The thing that confuses people is that if you use netstat or ifconfig, you still use /dev/lan1 or /dev/lan0, but there are actually no /dev/lan0/1 files for these newer drivers.
This is why you can configure and ping hte crads quite happily.
From the HP-UX 11.00 Release Notes under /usr/share/doc:

7.3.2 Replacement of LLA LAN Driver Interface with DLPI

As of HP-UX Release 10.30, the LLA LAN driver interface is no longer
supported. Users are encouraged to migrate their applications to DLPI. The
"LLA Programming and Migration Guide", part no. 98194-90053, discusses the
technical aspects of migrating applications from LLA to DLPI.

[rick jones]

actually, the planned obsolescense of LLA was announced in either the 10.0 or 10.20 release notes too :)

after a certain date, "new" drivers would no longer have LLA support, but older drivers might retain it.

the "lan2" driver is such an old driver, so there would still be LLA device files for it.

the "btlan" versus "btlan5" entry on the second B160 implies that the second B160 may be running 11.11? Perhaps there were enough ISVs that couldn't manage/bother to get their software updated in 7 years that it was necessary to add lla back into the btlan5 driver.

actually, given that 11.11 sees the grand reunification of the 100BT drivers, and the btlan3 driver was for a core interface, and since core interfaces may have required LLA as per the bogosity above, the addon getting a device file may have "just happened"

the upshot though is this - starting with 11, and continuing on, LLA is DEAD. DO NOT USE LLA. Use DLPI.