Chapter 4: Installing the Linux Drivers
50
Introduction This chapter discusses the Linux drivers for the Broadcom NetXtreme II
network adapters and describes how to install them. For a description of
the drivers, see Table 2.
Limitations This section describes the testing limitations of the following Linux drivers:
“bnx2 Driver” on page 50
“bnx2i Driver” on page 51
bnx2 Driver
The current version of the driver has been tested on 2.4.x kernels (starting
from 2.4.24) and all 2.6.x kernels. The driver may not compile on kernels
older than 2.4.24.
Testing is concentrated on i386 and x86_64 architectures. Only limited
testing has been done on other architectures. Minor changes to some
source files and Makefile may be needed on some kernels. Additionally,
the Makefile does not compile the cnic driver on kernels older than 2.6.16.
iSCSI offload is only supported on 2.6.16 and newer kernels.
Support for the 2.4.21 kernels is provided in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.
Table 2. Broadcom NetXtreme II Linux Drivers
Linux Driver Description
bnx2
cnic
Indicates the Linux drivers for the AT-2872SX
ExpressCard module. The bnx2 driver is the
networking driver and the cnic driver supports
additional features required by the bnx2i iSCSI
offload driver. The bnx2i iSCSI driver is
packaged separately.
bnx2i Indicates the Linux driver that enables iSCSI
offload on the AT-2872SX ExpressCard
module.