Chapter 6: Installing the Linux Drivers
74
cp /usr/share/hwdata/pcitable /usr/share/hwdata/
old.pcitable
cp /usr/share/hwdata/pcitable.new /usr/share/hwdata/
pcitable
Network Installations
For network installations through NFS, FTP, or HTTP (using a network
boot disk or PXE), a driver disk that contains the bnx2 driver may be
needed. The driver disk images for the most recent Red Hat and SuSE
versions are included. Boot drivers for other Linux versions can be
compiled by modifying the Makefile and the make environment. Further
information is available from the Red Hat website at http://
www.redhat.com.
Setting Values for Optional Properties
You can set values for optional properties for the bnx2 and bnx2i Linux
drivers. See the following sections:
“Setting Optional Properties for the bnx2 Driver” on page 74
“Setting Optional Properties for the bnx2i Driver” on page 75

Setting Optional Properties for the bnx2 Driver

The disable_msi optional property can be supplied as a command line
argument to the insmod or modprobe command. The property can also be
set in the modprobe.conf command. See the man page for more
information.
All other driver settings can be queried and changed using the ethtool
utility. See the ethtool man page for more information. The ethtool
settings do not persist across a reboot or module reload. In addition, you
can put the ethtool commands in a startup script, such as
/etc/rc.local, to preserve the settings across a reboot.
Note
Some combinations of property values may conflict and result in
failures. The driver cannot detect all conflicting combinations.
This property is used to disable Message Signal Interrupts (MSI). The
property is valid only on 2.6 kernels that support MSI. This property cannot
be used on 2.4 kernels. By default, the driver enables MSI if it is supported
by the kernel. It runs an interrupt test during initialization to determine if
MSI is working. If the test passes, the driver enables MSI. Otherwise, it
uses legacy INTx mode. To set the bnx2 driver, enter one of the following:
insmod bnx2.ko disable_msi=1
or
modprobe bnx2 disable_msi=1