Allied Telesis AT-2972SX - Manual (Page 10)

Enabling LINUX
10
Introduction
This chapter describes the tg3 Linux driver for the Broadcom NetXtreme-
based Allied Telesis PCI/PCI-X/PCI Express Ethernet Network
Controllers.
The most recent driver is included in the latest 2.6 Linux kernel. Generally,
you do not need to download the driver if you are using the latest 2.6
upstream kernel from www.kernel.org or one of the latest vendor kernels
from Red Hat, SuSE, or other vendors. However, you can download the
Linux driver as a source package from www.broadcom.com and then
select Downloads & Support, Ethernet NICS, Download Drivers, and
NetXtreme I Desktop/Mobile.
The tg3 driver from the Broadcom package is almost identical to the tg3
driver in the latest 2.6 upstream Linux kernel. It does include some
additional kernel-compatible code to allow it to compile on older 2.6 and
some 2.4 kernels. The version number is similar but generally has a one-
letter suffix, for example 3.55b, to distinguish it from the in-kernel tg3
driver.
Limitations
The current version of the driver has been tested on the 2.4x kernels
starting from 2.4.24 and all 2.6.x kernels.
Caution
The driver may not compile on kernels older than version 2.4.24.
Testing is concentrated on i386 and x86_64 CPU architectures. Only
limited testing has been done on some other architectures such as
PowerPC and SPARC64.
On some kernels, you may need to make minor changes to some source
files and the Makefile.
Packaging
To replace an older previously installed or in-kernel tg3 driver, follow the
instructions in “Installing the LINUX TG3 File” on page 11.
The driver package from www.broadcom.com is released in two
packaging formats: source RPM and compressed tar formats. The file
names for the two packages are tg3<version>.src.rpm and
tgs<version>.tar.gz respectively. Identical source files to build the driver
are included in both packages.