.\" Copyright (c) 2003 .\" Bill Paul . All rights reserved. .\" .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions .\" are met: .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. .\" 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software .\" must display the following acknowledgement: .\" This product includes software developed by Bill Paul. .\" 4. Neither the name of the author nor the names of any co-contributors .\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software .\" without specific prior written permission. .\" .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY Bill Paul AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND .\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE .\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE .\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL Bill Paul OR THE VOICES IN HIS HEAD .\" BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR .\" CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF .\" SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS .\" INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN .\" CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) .\" ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF .\" THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. .\" .\" $FreeBSD$ .\" .Dd March 14, 2010 .Dt NDIS 4 .Os .Sh NAME .Nm ndis .Nd NDIS miniport driver wrapper .Sh SYNOPSIS .Cd "options NDISAPI" .Cd "device ndis" .Cd "device wlan" .Sh DESCRIPTION The .Nm driver is a wrapper designed to allow binary .Tn Windows\[rg] NDIS miniport network drivers to be used with .Fx . The .Nm driver is provided in source code form and must be combined with the .Tn Windows\[rg] driver supplied with your network adapter. The .Nm driver uses the .Nm ndisapi kernel subsystem to relocate and link the .Tn Windows\[rg] binary so that it can be used in conjunction with native code. The .Nm ndisapi subsystem provides an interface between the NDIS API and the .Fx networking infrastructure. The .Tn Windows\[rg] driver is essentially fooled into thinking it is running on .Tn Windows\[rg] . Note that this means the .Nm driver is only useful on x86 machines. .Pp To build a functional driver, the user must have a copy of the driver distribution media for his or her card. From this distribution, the user must extract two files: the .Pa .SYS file containing the driver binary code, and its companion .Pa .INF file, which contains the definitions for driver-specific registry keys and other installation data such as device identifiers. These two files can be converted into a kernel module file using the .Xr ndisgen 8 utility. This file contains a binary image of the driver plus registry key data. When the .Nm driver loads, it will create .Xr sysctl 3 nodes for each registry key extracted from the .Pa .INF file. .Pp The .Nm driver is designed to support mainly Ethernet and wireless network devices with PCI, PCMCIA and USB bus attachments. (Cardbus devices are also supported as a subset of PCI.) It can support many different media types and speeds. One limitation however, is that there is no consistent way to learn if an Ethernet device is operating in full or half duplex mode. The NDIS API allows for a generic means for determining link state and speed, but not the duplex setting. There may be driver-specific registry keys to control the media setting which can be configured via the .Xr sysctl 8 command. .Sh DIAGNOSTICS .Bl -diag .It "ndis%d: watchdog timeout" A packet was queued for transmission and a transmit command was issued, however the device failed to acknowledge the transmission before a timeout expired. .El .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr altq 4 , .Xr arp 4 , .Xr netintro 4 , .Xr ng_ether 4 , .Xr ifconfig 8 , .Xr ndis_events 8 , .Xr ndiscvt 8 , .Xr ndisgen 8 , .Xr wpa_supplicant 8 .Rs .%T "NDIS 5.1 specification" .%U http://www.microsoft.com .Re .Sh HISTORY The .Nm device driver first appeared in .Fx 5.3 . .Sh AUTHORS The .Nm driver was written by .An Bill Paul Aq wpaul@windriver.com .