STE(4)

💖 STE(4) — the Sundance Technologies ST201 Fast Ethernet device driver 💖

okay bestie, sit down, hydrate, and let me tell you about ste(4) — a little kernel driver from the Kernel Interfaces Manual section of your fave manual pages. she's niche, she's vintage, she's iconic, and she makes old NICs go brrr. 🦋

---

✨ NAME ✨

ste — the Sundance Technologies ST201 Fast Ethernet device driver 💅

---

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

so like, you wanna bake this driver into the kernel? sure babe, drop these lines into your kernel configuration file:

device miibus
device ste

orrrr, if you'd rather load it as a module at boot time (which, honestly, slay), put this one line in loader.conf(5):

if_ste_load="YES"

pick your fighter, both are valid. 🫶

---

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

the ste driver is out here providing support for PCI Ethernet adapters and embedded controllers based on the Sundance Technologies ST201 PCI Fast Ethernet controller chip. it's giving retro-tech main character energy fr fr.

the Sundance ST201 uses bus master DMA and was literally designed to be a 3Com Etherlink XL workalike. same DMA descriptor structure, very similar in operation — but bestie, its register layout is different. so close, yet so not the same. 💀

the ST201 has a 64-bit multicast hash filter and a single perfect filter entry for the station address. she supports both 10 and 100Mbps speeds in either full or half duplex using an MII transceiver. versatile queen. 👑

the ste driver supports the following media types:

• autoselect — turns on autoselection of the media type and options. and here's the tea: you can manually override the autoselected mode by adding media options to the /etc/rc.conf file. no cap. ✨
• 10baseT/UTP — sets 10Mbps operation. the mediaopt option can also be used to select either full-duplex or half-duplex modes.
• 100baseTX — sets 100Mbps (Fast Ethernet) operation. the mediaopt option can also be used to select either full-duplex or half-duplex modes.

and the following media options:

• full-duplex — force full duplex operation. 💪
• half-duplex — force half duplex operation. 🎀

for more info on configuring this device, go see ifconfig(8). she has the details, iykyk.

---

✨ HARDWARE ✨

the ste driver supports Sundance Technologies ST201 based Fast Ethernet adapters and embedded controllers, including these icons:

• D-Link DFE-530TXS
• D-Link DFE-550TX
• D-Link DFE-580TX

D-Link really said "we're gonna make three of them" and honestly? respect. 🍓

---

✨ SYSCTL VARIABLES ✨

the following variables are available as both sysctl(8) variables and loader(8) tunables:

• dev.ste.%d.int_rx_mod — maximum number of time to delay RX interrupts. the valid range is 0 to 209712 in units of 1us, and the default is 150 (150us). the value 0 effectively disables the RX interrupt moderation. heads up: the resolution of the timer is about 3.2us, so finer tuning than 3.2us wouldn't be available. and the best part? the interface does not need to be brought down and up again before a change takes effect. we love a live-edit queen. 💅

---

✨ DIAGNOSTICS ✨

here's the drama, message by message:

• ste%d: couldn't map ports/memory — a fatal initialization error has occurred. 😭
• ste%d: couldn't map interrupt — a fatal initialization error has occurred. 😭 (yes, same energy, different mapping)
• ste%d: watchdog timeout — the device has stopped responding to the network, or there is a problem with the network connection (cable). check ur cable bestie.
• ste%d: no memory for rx list — the driver failed to allocate an mbuf for the receiver ring.
• ste%d: no memory for tx list — the driver failed to allocate an mbuf for the transmitter ring when allocating a pad buffer or collapsing an mbuf chain into a cluster.
• ste%d: chip is in D3 power state -- setting to D0 — okay so this message applies only to adapters which support power management. some operating systems place the controller in low power mode when shutting down, and some PCI BIOSes fail to bring the chip out of this state before configuring it. the controller loses all of its PCI configuration in the D3 state, so if the BIOS does not set it back to full power mode in time, it will not be able to configure it correctly. the driver tries to detect this condition and bring the adapter back to the D0 (full power) state, but this may not be enough to return the driver to a fully operational condition. if you see this message at boot time and the driver fails to attach the device as a network interface, you will have to perform a second warm boot to have the device properly configured. 🙈

ngl, note that this condition only occurs when warm booting from another operating system. if you power down your system prior to booting FreeBSD, the card should be configured correctly. so like... cold boot and chill. 🌸

---

✨ SEE ALSO ✨

altq(4), arp(4), miibus(4), netintro(4), ng_ether(4), polling(4), vlan(4), ifconfig(8)

also: Sundance ST201 data sheet, http://www.sundanceti.com. 📄

---

✨ HISTORY ✨

the ste device driver first appeared in FreeBSD 3.0. a true OG. 👑

---

✨ AUTHORS ✨

the ste driver was written by Bill Paul <wpaul@ee.columbia.edu>. thank you king, we owe you everything. 🫶

---

and that's the whole page, bestie!! 💜 this lil Debian edition of STE(4) is dated December 24, 2009 — a certified vintage, a holiday-season drop, an absolute classic. go forth and configure ur NIC, you've got this. periodt. 💅✨