RUE(4)

🦋 RUE(4) — the RealTek RTL8150 glow-up 💅

okay bestie, gather round, because we're talking about rue — the RealTek RTL8150 USB to Fast Ethernet controller driver, and honestly? she's a whole vibe. this is a page from the Kernel Interfaces Manual, and I promise it's gonna make sense. 🫶

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

so like, there are two ways to get her on board. option one: compile her straight into the kernel (main character energy, committed). drop these lines in your kernel config file:

device uhci
device ohci
device usb
device miibus
device uether
device rue

or, option two, be a little lowkey about it — load the driver as a module at boot time by putting this line in loader.conf(5):

if_rue_load="YES"

both are valid. no cap. ✨

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💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

the rue driver provides support for USB Ethernet adapters based on the RealTek RTL8150 USB to Fast Ethernet controller chip. that's her whole thing, and she does it well. 🎀

the RTL8150 contains an integrated Fast Ethernet MAC, which supports both 10 and 100Mbps speeds in either full or half duplex. iconic. BUT — and this is the important part, bestie, listen — although it was designed to interface with 100Mbps peripheral, the existing USB standard specifies a maximum transfer speed of 12Mbps. so like… don't expect to actually hit 100Mbps speeds with this device. 😭 it's giving "aspirational." the math is not mathing and that is simply not her fault.

🌸 the media types she supports 🌸

• autoselect — enable auto selection of the media type and options. you can manually override the auto selected mode by adding media options to the /etc/rc.conf file. she'll pick for you, but you're allowed to be pushy about it. 💅
• 10baseT/UTP — set 10Mbps operation. the mediaopt option can also be used to select either full-duplex or half-duplex modes. old reliable. 🍓
• 100baseTX — set 100Mbps (Fast Ethernet) operation. the mediaopt option can also be used to select either full-duplex or half-duplex modes. fast(er). 🔥

🌈 the media options 🌈

• full-duplex — force full duplex operation. both directions at once, she's ambidextrous, queen behavior. 👑
• half-duplex — force half duplex operation. one at a time. still valid. still slaying. 💜

for more info on configuring this device, go see ifconfig(8). iykyk. ✨

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🧚 HARDWARE 🧚

the rue driver supports RealTek RTL8150 based USB Ethernet adapters including:

• Buffalo (Melco Inc.) LUA-KTX
• Green House GH-USB100B
• LinkSys USB100M
• Billionton 10/100 FastEthernet USBKR2

if yours is on the list, she's yours. 💖

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💀 DIAGNOSTICS 💀

these are the messages you do not want to see in your logs, bestie. but if you do, at least now you'll know what she's saying:

• rue%d: watchdog timeout — a packet was queued for transmission and a transmit command was issued, however the device failed to acknowledge the transmission before a timeout expired. she went quiet on you. 🙈
• rue%d: rx list init failed — the driver failed to allocate an mbuf for the transmitter ring. (yes, "rx" in the message, "transmitter" in the explanation. that's what it says. we don't question it. 🫶)
• rue%d: no memory for rx list — the driver failed to allocate an mbuf for the receiver ring. out of memory, out of luck. 😭

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⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

arp(4), miibus(4), netintro(4), ng_ether(4), ifconfig(8)

and also the RealTek RTL8150 data sheet, at http://pdf.seekdatasheet.com/2008714/200807142333305235.pdf — yes it's a raw pdf link from 2008, no we're not clicking it on mobile. 🎀

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👑 HISTORY 👑

the rue device driver first appeared in FreeBSD 5.1. vintage. a true elder statesman. she's been here. 💅

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🫶 AUTHORS 🫶

the rue driver was written by Shunsuke Akiyama <akiyama@FreeBSD.org>. thank you king, we love you. 🌸

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ngl, that 12Mbps ceiling is the real plot twist of this whole page. love her anyway. 💖

okay that's the whole thing, bestie!! this was the Debian build of the RUE(4) page, dated November 24, 2015 — and yeah, that's the entire manual, we ate and left no crumbs. 🦋✨🎀