UNIX PC STARLAN ioctl() calls, URP protocol, streams, questions...
Lenny Tropiano
lenny at icus.ICUS.COM
Wed Jun 6 14:44:57 AEST 1990
While a lot of you are getting in a frenzy with the WIN/3B TCP/IP Ethernet
stuff, I felt it was necessary to pose a few questions to the net on STARLAN.
STARLAN boards for those who are interested should still be available from
Robert Slaski, and I recommend them very much. Granted not too many machines
(especially non-AT&T ones) run STARLAN, and worst yet, the 1Mbps STARLAN, as
opposed to the 10Mbps (aka STARLAN-10).
Documentation on STARLAN is the pits, even the programmers manual only goes
into the high-level library calls found in the libslan.a library. While
perusing the /usr/include/net and /usr/include/net/sys directories on my
system I started to get some ideas about doing "low-level" STARLAN operations,
and possibly learn a little more about this network media I have on my
two UNIX pc's.
The STARLAN driver on the UNIX pc has a special implementation of streams.
What modules can be pushed (I_PUSH) on to the /dev/starlan stream?
The URP protocol (what it uses to communicate between machines, similar to
what Ethernet can use, TCP/IP) is a stream module. Does anyone have
documentation on how to use the low-level driver ioctl()'s as well as
the stream driver. Doing a "strings" of my uucico (HDB) reveals some
interesting items...
These stream modules -- what do they do? How do I use them?
slancall: push(ccmod) errno %d
slancall: push(urpmod) errno %d
slancall: push(psxmod) errno %d
In /usr/include/net/starlan.h, there are some interesting #defines ...
#define LIS_PROMISC 0x0001 /* Promiscuous listening */
(One could write some sort of thing to listen on the network and catch
all the network packets in promiscous mode?)
#define ENC_MANCH 0x0004 /* Manchester encoding */
#define ENC_NRZ 0x0000 /* NRZ encoding */
(Encoding methods? Excuse my network naivety)
/*
* Ioctl commands (Unix)
*/
[...]
#define CS_DUMP (CIOC|6) /* Dump CSMA parameters */
#define CS_RST_CNTRS (CIOC|7) /* reset statistics counters */
These are used to get the STARLAN parameters for programs like
/usr/net/bin/remstat and /usr/net/bin/slnstat
STARLAN 1.1 NAU Statistics since Mon May 28 20:52:48 1990
Prom: 08 00 6A 02 7C 99 00 6B 63 6F 52 54 11 21 EF DF
System name: icus
Physical address: 08 00 6A 02 7C 99
Chip lockups: 0 Resource errors: 0
CRC errors: 0 DMA overruns: 0
Alignment errors: 0 DMA underruns: 0
Frames too short: 0 Pending sessions: 5
Loss of CTS: 0 Frames received: 11998
Loss of carrier: 0 Frames discarded: 0
Deferrals: 122 Total writes: 11983
Collisions: 141 Frames transmitted: 11975
Collision aborts: 8 Writes lost: 0
Illegal packets: 0
Duration: 8 days 3 hours 44 minutes 16 seconds
#define CS_DIAGNOSE (CIOC|12) /* Issue a diag. command */
Diagnostic commands? What commands?
#define CS_READPROM (CIOC|21) /* Read the on-board PROM */
To get that "Prom:" information ... (the network address of the board, etc.)
#define CS_MAINT_MODE (CIOC|25) /* Enter maintanence mode */
Maintanence mode?
/*
* Definitions pertaining to URP
*/
#define CS_XPARENT (CIOC|40) /* Set transparent mode */
#define CS_OPAQUE (CIOC|41) /* Set "opaque" mode */
[...]
Explain the difference between transparent mode and opaque mode? And
why uucico does this? (again from string table...)
slancall: net_ioctl(CS_OPAQUE) errno %d
[...]
#define N_ISN_OPTS (CIOC|83) /* Please don't ask!! */
Ok, I'll bite ... What the heck is this? :-)
[...]
* See Intel 82586 documentation / errata sheets for more details
That's the LAN chip they use? Is this the same chip as in STARLAN boards
of the IBM PC's?
/*
* Length of the useful data in the PROM
*/
#define SL_PROM_SIZE 16
[...]
Prom: 08 00 6A 02 7C 99 00 6B 63 6F 52 54 11 21 EF DF
Geez, I do count 16! And the first 6 are the physical address.
Anything about STARLAN that would be interesting to know would be appreciated!
Thanks.
-Lenny
--
| Lenny Tropiano ICUS Software Systems lenny at icus.ICUS.COM |
| {ames,pacbell,decuac,sbcs,hombre,rayssd}!icus!lenny attmail!icus!lenny |
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