Quad ethernet card getting assigned different channels every install

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The kernel is 2.4.18, from Redhat. I've looked at some of the code and I think this might actually be a hardware bug. I'm helping setup a 3 port firewall, I'm remote so I haven't been hands on, the guy has a quad ethernet card in it. Between kernel installs eth0, eth1, eth2, and eth3 seem to change which socket on the card they are.

Anyone seen anything like this before? The hardware didn't change and to my knowledge no BIOS changes have happened. I'd assume that the PCI bus would be enumerated the same each time and that the kernel, barring changes to PCI device discovery, would give the same ethernet channel to the same socket each time. It boots consistently when we figure out what port is what.

In this particular case it's potentially a big security concern, if we swapped the DMZ and protected zones and didn't notice then his network might be exposed.

thanks,
Ian
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Hi!

You can load the module and specify the I/O address of each mii. This way you'll allways get the same eth for a given I/O. Read the module's fine manual :)

Regards,
Nuno Silva

Hi !

I'm working with a device driver which comes in 2 modules.

One directly talking to the hardware and kernel, and the other sitting on top of it, in user mode providing a nice interface for user applications and etc.

Basically the top layer should directly communicate with bottom layer for any action.
I'm going through code of top layer, and it never calls the lower layer functions ! a sample code traverses as follows (i used source navigator to go through code)

ConnectRemoteSegment -> kcConnectR -> SISCI_IOCTL -> unixIoctl -> ioctl

all above fucntions are within the top layer code.
none are even listed in /proc/ksyms
and the ioctl function simply doesn't exist, not even in kernel source code.

I know i'm missing a major concept here, can someone guide me how to understand what's going on.

Thanks,

Salman

In article <[email protected]>,
Nuno Silva <[email protected]> wrote:

| Hi!
| 
| You can load the module and specify the I/O address of each mii. This 
| way you'll allways get the same eth for a given I/O. Read the module's 
| fine manual :)

| Ian S. Nelson wrote:

| > The kernel is 2.4.18, from Redhat. I've looked at some of the code and I 
| > think this might actually be a hardware bug.  I'm helping setup a 3 port 
| > firewall, I'm remote so I haven't been hands on,  the guy has a quad 
| > ethernet card in it.  Between kernel installs eth0, eth1, eth2, and eth3 
| > seem to change which socket on the card they are.

It's not clear if the association of the name (ethN) to the io address changes or the association of the io address to the connector. If Ian will clarify, and perhaps check the ifconfig after a few boots...

If it's the name to io address mapping, and I assume it is, then Nuno has the right idea, an options statement in modules.conf or on a command line. If it's the latter the the BIOS is NOT doing deterministic assignment. That would show in lspci with -vv, I believe. You could still fix this, but it would be ugly, parsing lspci output and building a command line for insmod.

bill davidsen <[email protected]>
  CTO, TMR Associates, Inc
Doing interesting things with little computers since 1979.

Hi Henrique,

thanks alot. your explanation answered some important questions of mine.

I need to get deep into this though, and yet understand how to interpret the (unsigned32 variable) "cmd" into a function name in my drivers and etc.

120 int stat = ioctl(dev, cmd, arg);
(gdb) p cmd
$1 = 1615069522
(gdb) p dev
$2 = 5
(gdb) p arg
$3 = (void *) 0x8050d30

can you advise me on what to read ? or where to go from here ? do you know of any resources on the internet regarding kernel, system calls, etc ? or which group/mailing list would be the optimum choice for me ?

thanks,

Salman