Silicon Integrated System Corp. is cooperating closely with core Linux Kernel developers. The revisions of SiS 900 driver are distributed by the usuall channels for kernel tar files and patches. Those kernel tar files for official kernel and patches for kernel pre-release can be download at official kernel ftp site and its mirrors. The 1.06 revision can be found in kernel version later than 2.3.15 and pre-2.2.14, and 1.07 revision can be found in kernel version 2.4.0. If you have no prior experience in networking under Linux, please read Ethernet HOWTO and Networking HOWTO available from Linux Documentation Project (LDP).
The driver is bundled in release later than 2.2.11 and 2.3.15 so this
is the most easy case.
Be sure you have the appropriate packages for compiling kernel source.
Those packages are listed in Document/Changes in kernel source
distribution. If you have to install the driver other than those bundled
in kernel release, you should have your driver file
sis900.c and sis900.h
copied into /usr/src/linux/drivers/net/ first.
There are two alternative ways to install the driver
To build the driver as a loadable kernel module you have to reconfigure the kernel to activate network support by
make menuconfig
Choose “Loadable module support --->”, then select “Enable loadable module support”.
Choose “Network Device Support --->”, select “Ethernet (10 or 100Mbit)”. Then select “EISA, VLB, PCI and on board controllers”, and choose “SiS 900/7016 PCI Fast Ethernet Adapter support” to “M”.
After reconfiguring the kernel, you can make the driver module by
make modules
The driver should be compiled with no errors. After compiling the driver, the driver can be installed to proper place by
make modules_install
Load the driver into kernel by
insmod sis900
When loading the driver into memory, some information message can be view by
dmesg
or
cat /var/log/message
If the driver is loaded properly you will have messages similar to this:
sis900.c: v1.07.06 11/07/2000 eth0: SiS 900 PCI Fast Ethernet at 0xd000, IRQ 10, 00:00:e8:83:7f:a4. eth0: SiS 900 Internal MII PHY transceiver found at address 1. eth0: Using SiS 900 Internal MII PHY as default
showing the version of the driver and the results of probing routine.
Once the driver is loaded, network can be brought up by
/sbin/ifconfig eth0 IPADDR broadcast BROADCAST netmask NETMASK media TYPE
where IPADDR, BROADCAST, NETMASK are your IP address, broadcast address and netmask respectively. TYPE is used to set medium type used by the device. Typical values are "10baseT"(twisted-pair 10Mbps Ethernet) or "100baseT" (twisted-pair 100Mbps Ethernet). For more information on how to configure network interface, please refer to Networking HOWTO.
The link status is also shown by kernel messages. For example, after the network interface is activated, you may have the message:
eth0: Media Link On 100mbps full-duplex
If you try to unplug the twist pair (TP) cable you will get
eth0: Media Link Off
indicating that the link is failed.