HME(4)

📦 version 12.2, in debian bookworm, debian trixie, ubuntu jammy, ubuntu noble, ubuntu questing, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

💖 hme(4) — the Kernel Interfaces Manual, but make it cute 💖

okay bestie, sit down, hydrate, and let me tell you about hme — that's the Sun Microelectronics STP2002-STQ Ethernet interfaces device driver ✨ it lives in section 4 of the kernel interfaces manual and it's genuinely iconic, no cap.

🌸 NAME 🌸

hme — Sun Microelectronics STP2002-STQ Ethernet interfaces device driver

like... that's the whole name. short, sweet, slays.

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

so if you wanna compile this driver into the kernel (main character energy, love that for you), you gotta put these lines in your kernel configuration file:

device miibus
device hme

or, alternatively, if you'd rather load the driver as a module at boot time, drop this single line into loader.conf(5):

if_hme_load="YES"

that's it. that's the whole vibe. 🎀

💀 DEPRECATION NOTICE 💀

girl. listen. The hme driver is not present in FreeBSD 13.0 and later. it's gone, bestie, she's retired. if you want the tea, see https://github.com/freebsd/fcp/blob/master/fcp-0101.md for more information. 😭

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

the hme driver supports Sun Microelectronics STP2002-STQ "Happy Meal Ethernet" Fast Ethernet interfaces. yes it's literally called Happy Meal Ethernet. we love a snack-themed interface. 🍓

and the way that all controllers supported by the hme driver have:

  • TCP checksum offload capability for both receive and transmit (both ways, periodt)
  • support for the reception and transmission of extended frames for vlan(4) (she's versatile)
  • a 128-bit multicast hash filter (fancy filter, we stan) ✨

👑 HARDWARE 👑

the hme driver supports the on-board Ethernet interfaces of many Sun UltraSPARC workstation and server models. so many. a whole buffet. 🫶

Cards supported by the hme driver include:

  • Sun PCI SunSwift Adapter ("SUNW,hme")
  • Sun SBus SunSwift Adapter ("hme" and "SUNW,hme")
  • Sun PCI Sun100BaseT Adapter 2.0 ("SUNW,hme")
  • Sun SBus Sun100BaseT 2.0 ("SUNW,hme")
  • Sun PCI Quad FastEthernet Controller ("SUNW,qfe")
  • Sun SBus Quad FastEthernet Controller ("SUNW,qfe")

look at that list. six whole cards. ate. 💅

📝 NOTES 📝

okay so on sparc64, the hme driver respects the local-mac-address? system configuration variable, which you can set in the Open Firmware boot monitor using the setenv command, or by using eeprom(8). iykyk.

  • If it's set to "false" (which is the default, bestie, don't forget), the hme driver will use the system's default MAC address for all of its devices.
  • If it's set to "true", the unique MAC address of each interface is used if present, rather than the system's default MAC address. ✨ individual. unique. her own identity. 💜

and fyi — supported interfaces having their own MAC address include on-board versions on boards equipped with more than one Ethernet interface and all add-on cards except the single-port SBus versions. so the single-port SBus ones? not invited to the MAC address party. 🙈

🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

altq(4), intro(4), miibus(4), netintro(4), vlan(4), eeprom(8), ifconfig(8)

Sun Microelectronics, STP2002QFP Fast Ethernet, Parallel Port, SCSI (FEPS) User's Guide, http://mediacast.sun.com/users/Barton808/media/STP2002QFP-FEPs_UG.pdf, April 1996.

🌈 HISTORY 🌈

the hme driver first appeared in NetBSD 1.5. the first FreeBSD version to include it was FreeBSD 5.0. a whole journey. a whole arc. ⭐

🎀 AUTHORS 🎀

the hme driver was written by Paul Kranenburg <pk@NetBSD.org>. thank you king, we appreciate you. 🙌

and that's the whole page, bestie — brought to you by the Debian crew, dated February 12, 2020, filed under HME(4). mwah. take care of her, she's deprecated but she's still our girl. 💖 ✨ 🦋 🎀 💅

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