KSE(4)

📦 version 11.0, in nixpkgs unstable

💅 KSE(4) 💅

okay so this is the kse manual page — it lives in the Kernel Interfaces Manual, and honestly? it's giving niche-but-iconic PCI ethernet driver energy 🎀

✨ NAME ✨

kse — the Micrel 8842/8841 PCI Ethernet controller driver, bestie. that's the whole vibe 💖

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

kse* at pci? dev ? function ?

that's it. that's the whole config line. she's lowkey minimalist 💅

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so the kse driver supports Ethernet interfaces that are based on the Micrel 8842/8841 PCI Ethernet chips ✨ and like, these are two different chips that need two different energies, so let's break it down:

  • the 8842 has 2 Ethernet ports and they behave as a managed switch to bridge each other 🫶
  • the way it works is literally like a T-shape connector of Ethernet data flow, where an Ethernet controller sits at the leg of the T 👑
  • frames can flow between the two ports, while traffic destined for the 8842 reaches the EMAC — multitasking queen fr fr 💀
  • the 8841 is just a plain 10/100 Ethernet — no drama, no switch, just vibes 🌈

and the kse driver distinguishes and handles them according to the HW model — she knows which chip she's dealing with, no cap 🧚

💜 SEE ALSO 💜

go read those too, iykyk 📚

⭐ AUTHORS ⭐

the kse driver was written by Tohru Nishimura — absolute icon, we stan 🙌💖

💀 BUGS 💀

okay bestie, strap in, because this section is where the tea gets spilled 🍓:

  • the __STRICT_ALIGNMENT case is not written 😭 like, it literally does not exist yet
  • the 8842 media selection keeps "auto" and indicates "up 100baseTX-FX flow" when either of two ports is found link-up — so it's kind of a package deal, not per-port 🙈
  • there is no functional provision to see and control the media selection of them this moment — so you can look, but you can't touch, and tbh you can't even really look 💀
  • advanced features like flow volume bound, VLAN tag insertion/removal, and QoS DiffServ are not implemented and remain uncontrollable by the kse driver — not me, not her, nobody 🫠
  • UDP4CSUM is not very useful, since the HW has an implementation error for the case when a large UDP datagram is fragmented into MTU sized frames — the hardware really said "i'm gonna sit this one out" 😭
fr fr, if you were hoping for VLAN tagging or QoS out of this thing, she's not that girl. periodt.

and that's the page, gorgeous 💅 this was the Debian version, dated July 6, 2006 — so, like, vintage. retro. a little archival moment 🎀✨ bye bestie, go configure some ethernet 🦋

📦 where this page comes from