fta(4)
Name
fta − device driver for DEFTA FDDI Network Adapter
Syntax
device fta0 at ibus? vector ftaintr
Description
The fta is a network device driver that controls a DEFTA. The DEFTA is a TURBOchannel 100 Mbit/second Fiber Distributed Data Interface (FDDI) timed token ring network adapter. The fta device driver allows the host system to be an FDDI single attachment station.
The host’s Internet address is specified at boot time with an SIOCSIFADDR ioctl. The fta device driver employs the address resolution protocol described in arp() to map dynamically between Internet and FDDI addresses on the local network.
The maximum frame size for the DEFTA interface is 4500 bytes, which is substantially larger that the 1500 bytes maximum packet size of the Ethernet interfaces. The fta device driver does not support the BSD trailer encapsulation, which is specific to the VAX architecture.
The SIOCRPHYSADDR ioctl can be used to read the physical address of the DEFTA adapter. The physical address of the DEFTA adapter can not be changed.
The SIOCADDMULTI and SIOCDELMULTI ioctls can be used to add or delete multicast addresses. The DEFTA supports up to 64 multicast addresses.
The SIOCRDCTRS ioctl can be used to read the FDDI driver counters. The DEFTA adapter status and characteristics can also be read through this ioctl by providing a FDDI_STATUS flag . The argument to this ioctl is a pointer to a counter or status structure, ctrreq, found in <net/if.h>.
The SIOCENABLBACK and SIOCDISABLBACK ioctls can be used to enable and disable the interface loopback mode, respectively.
The SIOCEEUPDATE ioctl can be used to update the adapter’s firmware.
The SIOCIFRESET ioctl can be used to reset the adapter.
Diagnostics
Diagnostic error messages contain information provided by the fta device driver. For example:
fta%d: ftaprobe selftest failed
The DEFTA adapter did not pass the power-up selftest during autoconfiguration.
fta%d: port init failed
The DEFTA adapter cannot be initialized.
fta%d: LINK unavailable
The network link has gone down and the station is no longer a member of the FDDI ring.
fta%d: Ring Init Received
A Ring Initialization unsolicited event has been received from the FDDI ring by the fta device driver through the DEFTA interface.