Debugging Guide

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Debugging Guide

Known Issues

  • MultiMac drivers (except NVETH, E1000E, and R8169) are built from 2 major pieces:
    1. The FreeBSD driver which is simply compiled to run on OS/2
    2. The system library which is the interface between the FreeBSD driver and OS/2

    While we will always try our best to support these drivers, please realize that there is not much we can do about (1). We simply do not have the manpower, or even the technical information necessary to debug or enhance this portion of the driver. If this driver doesn’t work on hardware that it is supposed to, the limit of what we can do is verify that it is loading properly. Other than that, we simply cannot debug problems in the FreeBSD code and we cannot add support for more chipsets. We cannot even fix problems if it doesn’t work properly on your hardware because we don’t have the hardware data that would be required.

    Development is continuing on (2) so there might be improvements to the OS/2 interface as time goes on. This generally will not affect whether the driver works or doesn’t work on any given hardware, but might affect things like traps, hangs, and interfacing to existing features in the FreeBSD driver.

  • The interface speed shown by the “netstat -n” command always shows 100000000 regardless of the actual interface speed. This is because most of the FreeBSD drivers do not report the interface speed, so a default number is used. Currently the only FreeBSD drivers that report link speed are E1000B, MMIGB, and MMLEM.

Before Opening a Ticket

Things to check before opening a ticket if you have problems

  • Make sure your issue is not listed in the Known Issues section above.
  • Make sure you are using the latest version of a supported driver. Only drivers distributed by Arca Noae are supported. The E1000E, R8169, and any other builds from other sources are not supported.
  • Make sure you are using an official supported kernel. Only the official IBM 14.104a debug, 14.105, 14.106, and the Arca Noae kernels 14.104b, 14.104c, and 14.20x are supported.
  • Make sure you are using an official supported loader for the kernel you are using.
  • If you have ACPI.PSD installed, make sure it is the latest version and that you are not using any unnecessary switches. Recent versions of the MultiMac drivers will not work with ACPI.PSD older than 3.23.04 and may cause traps.
  • Make sure you don’t have any load order violations in your CONFIG.SYS. Specifically make sure that all IFS statements come before all MAC drivers.

If you open a ticket, please attach a TestLog log file when you open your ticket. Always make sure you capture the TestLog log file when the problem exists. If you cannot create a TestLog log, please include the bldlevel output for the driver you are using and the PCI Vendor ID and Device ID of your hardware in the ticket (ie. the section from PCI.EXE that relates to your NIC). If the driver traps, please, include the trap screen.

Capturing A TestLog log file

If you don’t already have the current version of the TestLog program, you can download it here: Get TestLog

Open a command window and execute the testlog command for your particular driver. For example:

testlog network

Attach the created log file to your ticket. Do not ZIP the log file. Always make sure you capture the TestLog log file when the problem exists.

This entry last updated: by David A