Owners of ethernet cards based on NVIDIA's nForce chipset will be pleased to learn that forcedeth has been released for the 2.4 stable kernel. As with the 2.6 version [story], the driver is still considered to be of alpha quality. Carl-Daniel Hailfinger explains, "This release [is] intended for developers, it's alpha quality: normal network traffic could work, although [slowly] due to incomplete interrupt handling. It does work on two nForce 2 systems, nForce and nForce 3 are untested."

The driver has been merged into Bernhard Rosenkraenzer's latest -pac release [story], 2.4.23-rc1-pac1 [story]. It has also been merged into Andrew Morton's [interview] latest -mm release [story], 2.6.0-test9-mm2 [story].

From: Carl-Daniel Hailfinger [email blocked]
To: Linux Kernel Mailing List [email blocked]
Subject: [PATCH 2.4] forcedeth
Date: Sat, 08 Nov 2003 06:47:43 +0100

Attached is forcedeth: A new driver for the ethernet interface of the
NVIDIA nForce chipset, licensed under GPL.

The driver was written without support from NVIDIA, it's the result of
a cleanroom development:
Carl-Daniel and Andrew reverse engineered the nvnet driver and wrote a
specification, Manfred wrote the driver based on the spec. Since the
driver has been available and working for a while now, Carl-Daniel
fitted some compat glue to make it compile under 2.4.

This release it intended for developers, it's alpha quality: normal
network traffic could work, although slow due to incomplete interrupt
handling. It does work on two nForce 2 systems, nForce and nForce 3
are untested.

Try it yourself, but don't complain if something breaks. Note that
the driver generates quite a lot of debug output.

Send any reports to linux-kernel or [email blocked] and Manfred
will scoop them up.

You also can download the patches for Linux 2.4.x and 2.6.x from
http://www.hailfinger.org/carldani/linux/patches/forcedeth/


        Manfred Spraul
        Carl-Daniel Hailfinger
        Andrew de Quincey



From: Christoph Hellwig [email blocked]
Subject: Re: [PATCH 2.4] forcedeth
Date: Sat, 8 Nov 2003 08:54:15 +0000

On Sat, Nov 08, 2003 at 06:47:43AM +0100, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
> Attached is forcedeth: A new driver for the ethernet interface of the
> NVIDIA nForce chipset, licensed under GPL.

Any chance to give the driver a more descriptive name, say nforce_eth?
Traditionally we tend to name like drivers after the hardware's name or
codename, not the development methology used.



From: Jeff Garzik [email blocked]
Subject: Re: [PATCH 2.4] forcedeth
Date: Sat, 08 Nov 2003 12:55:16 -0500

Christoph Hellwig wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 08, 2003 at 06:47:43AM +0100, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
> 
>>Attached is forcedeth: A new driver for the ethernet interface of the
>>NVIDIA nForce chipset, licensed under GPL.
> 
> 
> Any chance to give the driver a more descriptive name, say nforce_eth?
> Traditionally we tend to name like drivers after the hardware's name or
> codename, not the development methology used.


I agree with you on this -- but -- in this special case, it seems wise 
to avoid using a potential trademark as a filename...

I would prefer to avoid the issue completely, rather have to chase down 
some lawyers and get a definitive answer.

	Jeff



From: Carl-Daniel Hailfinger [email blocked]
Subject: Re: [PATCH 2.4] forcedeth
Date: Sat, 08 Nov 2003 21:23:38 +0100

Jeff Garzik wrote:
> I agree with you on this -- but -- in this special case, it seems wise
> to avoid using a potential trademark as a filename...
> 
> I would prefer to avoid the issue completely, rather have to chase down
> some lawyers and get a definitive answer.

We (Manfred, Andrew and I) debated the name for quite a long time and
forcedeth, forced and forceeth were the final candidates. forcedeth was
not only a descriptive name, but also a clever pun. So it won the compo.


Carl-Daniel

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