VIC(4) OpenBSD Programmer's Manual VIC(4)
NAME
vic - VMware Virtual Network Interface Controller driver
SYNOPSIS
vic* at pci?
DESCRIPTION
The vic driver provides support for the virtual NIC available in virtual
machines by VMware. It appears as a simple Ethernet device but is a vir-
tual network interface to the underlying host operating system indeed.
This driver supports the vmxnet driver protocol, as an alternative to the
emulated pcn(4) interface also available in the VMware environment. The
vic driver is optimized for the virtual machine, it can provide advanced
capabilities depending on the underlying host operating system and the
physical network interface controller of the host.
Unlike the capabilities of physical network interface controllers, these
capabilities may change after reboot. The list of available capabilities
is printed by the kernel on startup, which could be:
SG Transmit scatter-gather lists are supported (required).
CSUM4 IPv4 TCP/UDP checksum offload is supported (ignored).
CSUM IPv4/IPv6/TCP/UDP checksum offload is supported (ignored).
HDMA Can map high DMA memory.
TOE TCP offload engine available (ignored).
TSO TCP segmentation offload supported (ignored).
TSOHW Software-based TSO supported (ignored).
VPROM Virtual PROM available, used for the MAC address.
VLANTx VLAN tagging available (ignored).
VLANRx VLAN untagging available (ignored).
VLANSW Software-based VLAN tagging on the host (ignored).
The vic driver supports the following media types:
autoselect Enable autoselection of the media type and options. The
driver always uses the fastest available speed and the media
options provided by the underlying host of the virtual ma-
chine.
For more information on configuring this device, see ifconfig(8).
HARDWARE
The vic driver supports VMware Virtual NICs provided by the following
known products:
+o VMware ESX Server
+o VMware GSX Server 2.5 and newer
+o VMware Server
DIAGNOSTICS
vic%d: I/O mapping of register space failed A fatal initialization error
has occurred.
vic%d: interrupt mapping failed A fatal initialization error has oc-
curred.
vic%d: couldn't establish interrupt A fatal initialization error has oc-
curred.
vic%d: watchdog timeout The device has stopped responding to the net-
work, or there is a problem with the network connection (cable of the
host).
SEE ALSO
arp(4), ifmedia(4), intro(4), netintro(4), pci(4), pcn(4),
hostname.if(5), ifconfig(8)
AUTHORS
The vic driver was written by Reyk Floeter <reyk@openbsd.org>.
OpenBSD 3.9 December 20, 2005 2