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Configuring a VIA Rhine-Based NIC on the Solaris 10 OS

Federico Lazcano, June, 2005

This Tech Tip shows how to configure a VIA Rhine chipset-based network interface card, using the Solaris 10 OS for x86 platforms.

1. Download and Unpack the Driver

The first task in this how-to is to download the driver for the VIA Rhine chipset. It can be downloaded from the Free NIC drivers for Solaris site:

http://homepage2.nifty.com/mrym3/taiyodo/rh-1.0.17.tar.gz

This package provides the source code to build the driver. It was tested on the following operating systems:

• Solaris 10 12/04 x86 with AMD64 architecture
• Solaris 9 SPARC
• Solaris 9 12/02 x86
• Solaris 8 SPARC
• Solaris 8 10/00 x86

Download the package and save it (for example, on a floppy disk) and then copy it to your box running the Solaris 10 OS.

The next step is to unpack the package. The friendly bunzip2 command will do it for us.

bash-3.00$ cd /export/home/flazcano/
bash-3.00$ ls -la rh*
-rw-r--r--   1 flazcano other     144815 abr 13 10:08 rh-1.0.17.tar.gzbash-3.00$ 
bash-3.00$ gunzip rh-1.0.17.tar.gz
bash-3.00$ ls -l *.tar
-rw-r--r--   1 flazcano other     461312 abr 13 10:08 rh-1.0.17.tar
bash-3.00$ tar xf rh-1.0.17.tar
bash-3.00$ cd rh-1.0.17

2. Build and Install

The default choice is to compile the driver for the Solaris OS, 32 bits on x86 architecture, using the GNU C Compiler (gcc). If you need to change any of these parameters, simply remove the symbolic link and create a new one named Makefile pointing to your architecture/compiler. We used the driver with the default settings, Solaris 10 for x86 with gcc.

bash-3.00$ pwd
/export/home/flazcano/rh-1.0.17
bash-3.00$ ls -la Makefile
lrwxrwxrwx   1 flazcano other         17 abr 13 10:11 Makefile -> Makefile.i386_gcc

For our architecture, the driver is already compiled; we just need to install it in the kernel directory. We need administrative privileges to do it.

bash-3.00$ su
Password:
# /usr/ccs/bin/make install
# ./adddrv.sh
# devfsadm -i rh

3. Configure (1)

The next step is to create and edit configuration files. First, we need to create a /etc/hostname.interface file, and add the IP address of the interface.

# touch /etc/hostname.rh0
# echo “192.168.1.54” > /etc/hostname.rh0

Then we need to edit the following files:

# echo "192.168.1.52    set             set.kit.com.ar" >> /etc/inet/hosts
# echo “192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0” >> /etc/netmasks

and plumb the interface:

# ifconfig rh0 plumb up

4. Reboot and Verify

To apply changes we need to reboot our operating system.

# shutdown -y -i6 -g0

When the system comes up, we test the interface with ifconfig:

# ifconfig -a
lo0: flags=2001000849<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST,IPv4,VIRTUAL> mtu 8232 index 1
        inet 127.0.0.1 netmask ff000000
rh0: flags=1000843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST,IPv4> mtu 1500 index 2
        inet 192.168.1.54 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255
        ether 0:c:76:96:d2:93

And we execute a ping to our default gateway.

# ping 192.168.1.1
192.168.1.1 is alive

5. Configure (2)

To obtain a fully functional system we have to configure the files that manage the network behavior. Edit /etc/resolv.conf to add your name server and network search.

# cat resolv.conf
domain kit.com.ar
nameserver 192.168.1.1
search kit.com.ar

Search in /etc/nsswitch.conf for the parameters' hosts and ipnodes, and edit to add DNS servers to resolve the external hosts.

hosts:      files dns
ipnodes:    files dns

Then we need to configure the default gateway for our network:

# echo "192.168.1.1" > /etc/defaultrouter
# route add default 192.168.1.1

Now we can use our VIA Rhine-based NIC on the Solaris 10 OS for x86 platforms.

About the Author

Federico Lazcano works for Kit Ingeneria Electronica S.R.L. in the Pre-Sales area, specializing in hardware and infrastructure services. He is a student at the Universidad Nacional de Rosario, Argentina, seeking his degree in Electronic Engineering. Please send comments or feedback: flazcano@kit.com.ar.

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