plcmdio32(1)

💖 NAME 💖

okay so bestie, meet plcmdio32 — the Qualcomm Atheros 32-bit MDIO Register Editor ✨ and yeah, this whole page is living in the Qualcomm Atheros Open Powerline Toolkit manual, section 1, where it belongs 👑

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

plcmdio32 [options] [device] [device] [...]

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

So what does it actually do? It reads or writes global MDIO registers using a bunch of VS_MDIO_COMMAND vendor-specific management messages. You type in your commands as 32-bit register and data values, and then it converts them into three equivalent 16-bit commands. Slay 💅

The default operation is to read a register. Registers only get written if you actually put data on the command line — no data, no writing, periodt.

This program replaces program int6kmdio2. 🫶

It writes MDIO instructions using 802.3ae Clause 45 (address, data and mask) format. And if you want the sibling energy, go look at program int6kmdio — that's a similar program that writes instructions using 802.3 Clause 22 (phy, reg, data and mask) format.

Also: this program is part of the Qualcomm Atheros Powerline Toolkit. It replaces the legacy program int6kmdio2. See the plc man page for an overview and installation instructions 🌈

✨ OPTIONS ✨

• -a address — the 19-bit global register address. Heads up: some devices may not support all possible addresses 🙈. Addresses can be written in decimal, hexadecimal or binary notation. Hexadecimal values must be prefixed with "0x" or "0X". Binary values must be prefixed with "0b" or "0B".
• -d data — a 32-bit data value to be inserted into the specified register. The data value gets written when this option is present; otherwise the specified register is read and its content is displayed. Data values can be written in decimal, hexadecimal or binary notation. Hexadecimal values are prefixed with "0x" or "0X". Binary values are prefixed with "0b" or "0B".
• -e — redirects stderr messages to stdout. By convention, status and error messages get printed on stderr while primary program output goes to stdout. This option prints all output on stdout, for when that's the vibe you want.
• -h — when writing 32-bit values, write to the high-order register before the low-order register. You need this in cases where the value in one register may affect the interpretation of some value written to the other register. This is not a common situation, ngl.
• -i interface — select the host Ethernet interface. All requests are sent via this host interface, and only responses received via this host interface are recognized. The default interface is eth1 because most people use eth0 as their principle network connection; however, if environment string "PLC" is defined then it takes precedence over the default interface. This option then takes precedence over either default 👑
• -q — suppresses status messages on stderr. Quiet luxury ✨
• -v — prints additional information on stdout. In particular, this option dumps outgoing Ethernet packets on stdout.
• -?, --help — displays program help information on stderr. This option takes precedence over all other options on the command line except version information.
• -!, --version — displays program version information on stderr. This option takes precedence over all other options on the command line except help information. Use this option when sending screen dumps to Atheros technical staff 📸

🎀 ARGUMENTS 🎀

• device — the MAC address of some powerline device. More than one address may be specified. If more than one address is specified, then operations are performed on each device in turn. The default address is local. See DEVICES for info about symbolic device addresses.

💜 DEVICES 💜

Powerline devices use Ethernet Media Access Control (MAC) addresses. A MAC address is a 48-bit value entered as 12 hexadecimal digits in upper, lower or mixed character case. Octets may be separated with colons for clarity ✨ For example, "00b052000001", "00:b0:52:00:00:01" and "00b052:000001" are all valid and equivalent. it's giving flexible, honestly.

The following MAC addresses are special and may be entered by name instead of number:

• all — same as "broadcast".
• broadcast — a synonym for the Ethernet broadcast address, FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF. All devices, whether local, remote or foreign, recognize messages sent to this address. A remote device is any device at the far end of a powerline connection. A foreign device is any device not manufactured by Atheros 🌍
• local — a synonym for the Qualcomm Atheros vendor specific Local Management Address (LMA), 00:B0:52:00:00:01. All local Atheros devices recognize this address, but remote and foreign devices do not. A remote device is any device at the far end of a powerline connection. A foreign device is any device not manufactured by Atheros.

🌈 REFERENCES 🌈

See the Qualcomm Atheros HomePlug AV Firmware Technical Reference Manual for technical information 📚

⚠️ DISCLAIMER ⚠️

Atheros HomePlug AV Vendor Specific Management Message structure and content is proprietary to Qualcomm Atheros, Ocala FL USA. Consequently, public information may not be available. Qualcomm Atheros reserves the right to modify message structure and content in future firmware releases without any obligation to notify or compensate users of this program. 💀 yeah. read that twice.

🍓 EXAMPLES 🍓

None.

literally none. iconic of them honestly.

🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

plc(1), plcmod(1), plcmdio16(1), mdioblock(1), mdioblock2(1), mdiodump(1), mdiogen(1)

👑 CREDITS 👑

Nathaniel Houghton Charles Maier

and that's the whole page, bestie 🫶 this little masterpiece shipped as part of open-plc-utils-0.0.3, dated November 2013 — old but still serving looks, no cap ✨💅