SE(4)

💅 SE(4)

okay so bestie, this is the se manual page — it lives in the Kernel Interfaces Manual, and it's all about the Cabletron EA41x SCSI bus Ethernet interface driver. yes, that's a whole mouthful. we love her anyway 🫶

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✨ NAME ✨

se — the Cabletron EA41x SCSI bus Ethernet interface driver. that's it, that's the name, no notes 💖

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🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

se* at scsibus? target ? lun ?

like, that's the whole vibe check right there ✨

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

The se driver supports the Cabletron EA41x SCSI bus Ethernet interface. iconic of her, honestly.

This driver is a bit unusual. lowkey she has main character energy in two worlds at once: it must look like a network interface and it must also appear to be a SCSI device to the SCSI system. both. at the same time. no cap 😭

In addition, to facilitate SCSI commands issued by userland programs, there are open(), close(), and ioctl() entry points. so a user program can, for example, display the EA41x statistic and download new code into the adaptor — functions which can't be performed through the ifconfig(8) interface. it's giving backstage access 🎀

Normal operation does not require any special userland program. so don't stress, bestie, you can just use her normally 💅

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👑 SEE ALSO 👑

• scsi(4)
• ifconfig(8)

go read those too, iykyk 💜

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🧚 AUTHORS 🧚

Ian Dall <ian.dall@dsto.defence.gov.au> — put some respect on the name ✨

Acknowledgement: Thanks are due to Philip L. Budne <budd@cs.bu.edu> who reverse engineered the EA41x. In developing this code, Phil's userland daemon "etherd", was referred to extensively in lieu of accurate documentation for the device. literally reverse-engineering a whole adapter with no docs, that's so much work, we stan 🌈

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💀 BUGS 💀

okay so this is where it gets a little unhinged:

The EA41x doesn't conform to the SCSI specification in much at all. like, at all at all 🙈 About the only standard command supported is "inquiry". Most commands are 6 bytes long, but the recv data is only 1 byte. Data must be received by periodically polling the device with the recv command. yes, polling. periodically. that's the whole thing. she's quirky like that 💀

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and that's the page, bestie — written for Debian, dated February 3, 1997, and honestly? a whole vintage moment. mwah 🎀💖