RGEPHY(4)

💖 RGEPHY(4) 💖

ok so bestie, welcome to the Kernel Interfaces Manual section 4, and today we're talking about rgephy — the RealTek RTL8168/8169/8110/8211 series 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet PHY driver. yes the name is a mouthful, no you don't need to say it out loud, just vibe with me 🦋

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✨ NAME ✨

rgephy — RealTek RTL8168/8169/8110/8211 series 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet PHY driver

like. it's the little PHY driver that could. iconic behavior honestly 💅

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

so there are two ways to get this into your kernel and you gotta pick your fighter.

if you want ALL the available PHY drivers compiled in (yes all of them, greedy queen behavior), drop this line into your kernel config file:

device miibus

or, if you'd rather be selective and only compile this driver in, put these lines in your kernel configuration file instead:

device mii
device rgephy

both are valid, it's just about how much you want on the menu 🎀

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💫 DESCRIPTION 💫

the rgephy driver supports the RealTek RTL8168, RTL8169, RTL8110 and RTL8211 series integrated 10/100/1000 Gigabit Ethernet PHYs. so like, all the RealTek gigabit baddies. all of them. covered. 💜

now — if you want to see the media types and options that a specific instance of the rgephy driver supports, you run ifconfig -m on the instance of its parent MAC driver. that's the move. that's how you get the tea. 🫖

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🎀 special media option 🎀

bestie, there's one extra special media option and it's lowkey the whole point of this page:

• flag0 — okay so here's the situation. when you're manually setting the media type and options via ifconfig(8), the rgephy driver will by default also trigger an autonegotiation advertising the media you just selected. why?? because it's working around hardware issues in certain scenarios. it's believed that this behavior doesn't cause harm in general — but fr fr, it can actually have an adverse effect in edge cases. so if you want to manually set the media type and options without also triggering an autonegotiation, rgephy lets you turn that behavior off via the flag0 media option. slay.

⚠️ heads up queen: this special media option will not show up in the output of ifconfig(8), even when it's set. so don't be out here staring at ifconfig wondering where your flag went. it's there. it's just shy. 🙈

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🔥 EXAMPLES 🔥

here's the moment you've been waiting for. manually set 100BASE-TX full-duplex without also triggering an autonegotiation:

ifconfig re0 media 100baseTX mediaopt full-duplex,flag0

see how flag0 is just chilling at the end there? that's the whole trick. main character energy. ⭐

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• intro(4)
• miibus(4)
• ifconfig(8)

go read those, they're all part of the lore 📚

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and that's the page bestie!! this one came from the <b>Debian</b> source, dated <b>January 16, 2011</b> — yes it's an elder but it's still serving. go forth and configure your gigabit ethernet with confidence. mwah 💋