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Common Device Drivers

Knowing that a device driver exists is fine, but what name goes with which hardware? This section lists the common device drivers, and the hardware that they support.

Again, I'm not going to discuss each device driver in detail, but instead provide a reference to the man page where greater detail can be found. The OpenBSD team is meticulous about keeping their man pages up-to-date, and documentation flaws are considered fairly serious bugs.

Not all hardware is unique to i386, but not much is found on all hardware platforms. The ne2000 network card runs on both Alpha and i386, for example, but not on Sparc. For that reason, all hardware device drivers are kept with the hardware, rather than in the cross-platform information.

Busses

Busses are the bolts that hold a computer's components. When a piece of hardware wants to talk to another piece of hardware, the signals travel along a bus. Busses plug into each other. If you don't include the proper busses for your hardware in your kernel, your kernel will not work properly. Perhaps such a kernel won't boot, or perhaps you won't see all of your hardware.

mainbus0 at root

Every lesser bus talks to the main bus, or to some bus connected to the main bus. Every i386 kernel must have this.

bios0 at mainbus0

This is the hardware built-in operating system. It's always attached to the main bus. A BIOS driver is necessary on almost all hardware. You can read all about the BIOS driver in bios(4).

isa0

This is a standard old-fashioned ISA bus. Many so-called "ISA-free systems" actually do have an ISA bus in them; they simply don't have any ISA card slots. Here, we plug the ISA bus into the main bus:

isa0 at mainbus0

Or, you could plug the ISA bus into a PCI-ISA bridge:

isa0 at pcib?

You can learn more by reading isa(4).

eisa

The Extended Industry-Standard Architecture bus is not very common these days, having mostly been supplanted by PCI. Here, we show an EISA bus attached to the mainbus:

eisa0 at mainbus0

You can learn more in eisa(4).

pci

The Peripheral Component Interconnect bus is the modern standard. Generally speaking, it's plugged into the main bus. Here, we show a PCI bus plugged into the main bus. Since PCI is self-configuring, we don't need to hard-code a device number. Here, we have a PCI bus attached to the main bus:

pci* at mainbus0 bus ?

A PCI bus can also attach to a PCI-PCI bridge (ppb) or a PCI-Host bridge (pchb).

You can get more information in pci(4).

pcmcia

This is the PCMCIA bus, generally used for 16-bit PC Cards as found in laptops.

This bus supports 32-bit CardBus cards, most commonly found in laptops.

usb

The USB bus is always attached to a USB controller. It manages all USB devices.

iop

man: iop(4)

This driver incorporates general support for I2O in the kernel. Intelligent Input-Output specification is a newer input-output standard for input/output devices.

i386 Core Hardware

This hardware is common to just about any i386 system.

This drives the Numerical Processing Extension, also known as the floating-point coprocessor. All modern hardware has a FPU — on the i386, only 386s and some 486s do not. You must have either the npx device, or the GPL_MATH_EMULATE kernel option in your kernel, or your kernel will not boot. You can find more documentation in npx(4).

This handles DMA support for disks on the ISA bus.

This handles ISA plug-and-play.

pckbc

This is the keyboard controller, the place on the motherboard where the keyboard traditionally plugs in. You almost certainly want this! It is documented in pckbc(4).

pckbd

This is the actual keyboard. Note that while it is possible to remap your keyboard to your local layout at the kernel level, it's almost always better to use wsconsctl(8). If you must remap your keyboard at the kernel level, check out pckbd(4).

This is a PS/2 mouse, plugged into the onboard keyboard controller's PS/2 mouse port. You can learn a little more in pms(4).

man: pms(4)

This driver supports the PS/2 "IntelliMouse" wheeled mice. Wheel usage is handled automatically.

man: lms(4)

This driver manages the Logitech bus mouse.

man: mms(4)

This supports the Microsoft-style bus mouse, such as the InPort mouse.

vga

man: vga(4)

This is the classic VGA graphics card found.

man: pcdisplay(4)

This supports pre-VGA video cards, such as CGA, MDA, EGA, and HGA displays. You'll only find these on extremely old hardware.

lpt

man: lpt (4)

This is a parallel port, also known as a printer port.

Bridges

Bridges connect one sort of bus (or other subsystem) to another.

This PCI-Host bridge supports adapter-specific functions on a narrow range of hardware. Among the more interesting of these devices are the i82810/810E, the i82815/815E, the i82820, and the i82840, which supply random numbers to the operating system. See pchb(4) for details on the hardware this driver supports in your version of OpenBSD.

This is a PCI-PCI bridge, which attaches one PCI bus to another. It really doesn't need much configuration.

This bridge attaches an ISA bus to a PCI bus. Again, it's fairly simple and doesn't need configuration.

Non-SCSI Controllers

A controller is a device that interfaces between a device and a bus. They are commonly used for removable hardware such as laptop cards and USB devices.

fdc

man: fdc(4)

This is the controller for the i386 floppy drive controller. Any standard system (IDE, SCSI, and so on) with a floppy drive will use this controller.

pcic

man: pcic(4)

The pcic devices are common ISA PCMCIA controllers, for 16-bit PC Card devices. This device does not support 32-bit CardBus cards; you need a cardbus device for those.

man: tcic(4)

This is a Databook ISA PCMCIA controller. It's disabled by default in the GENERIC kernel, but you can enable it with config -e. It's strictly an ISA controller.

man: uhci(4)

This is an Intel USB Controller (also known as a Universal Host Controller). It's always plugged into a PCI bus.

man: ohci(4)

This is the Open Host Controller USB controller, the alternative to Intel's Universal Host Controller. It's always plugged into a PCI bus.

pciide

man: pciide(4)

This driver supports all IDE controllers attached to the PCI bus. It supports the DMA and UltraDMA functions of these controllers.

wdc

man: wdc(4)

This controller supports IDE hard disk controllers on an ISA or Plug-and-Play ISA bus. You might consider trying the 0x01 flag to enable 32-bit negotiation, but this can cause problems on some motherboards.

atapiscsi

man: atapiscsi(4)

This integrates the ATAPI (IDE) system with the SCSI system, so that IDE devices can appear as SCSI devices. See Chapter 15. All CD-ROM devices attach to the ATAPISCSI system automatically, so you can use SCSI-only CD-ROM access programs to access your IDE CD-ROMs.

SCSI Controllers

SCSI controllers are fairly straightforward and don't require much individual documentation. Many drivers support quite a few similar cards, so if you have a card similar to one listed here, check the man page to see whether it is supported. Remember, you must attach a SCSI bus to your SCSI card!

RAID Controllers

The following RAID controllers all use SCSI interfaces and SCSI drives, so you must attach a SCSI bus to your card to make it work. All RAID functionality is handled by the BIOS on the card.

SCSI Interface Devices

The following SCSI devices can be attached to a SCSI bus:

sd

man: sd(4)

This supports all SCSI disk drives.

st

man: st(4)

This handles all SCSI tape drives.

cd

man: cd(4)

This driver handles all CD-ROM drives, both SCSI and IDE.

ch

man: ch(4)

This drives all SCSI autochanger devices, such as CD jukeboxes.

ss

This identifies SCSI scanners. SCSI scanner support is questionable, and you will want to check the mailing list archives closely before purchasing any scanner.

uk

man: uk(4)

This driver attaches to all unidentified SCSI devices. You would need a program to actually access these devices, but at least the kernel shows something when you probe such a device.

Non-SCSI Storage Devices

This catchall category includes everything you can store data on that isn't SCSI.

fd

man: fdc(4)

This is an old-fashioned floppy disk drive, which supports everything from the fancy 2.88MB disk to the huge 360Kb disk.

mcd

man: mcd(4)

This driver supports the Mitsumi CD-ROM drive.

wd

man: wd(4)

This supports IDE hard disks. By default, the drive will attempt to use whatever features (PIO, DMA, and so forth) the drive claims to support. If you find that a hard disk does not function as you expect in the mode it claims to support, you might try hard-coding a slower mode into your kernel. (You would probably be better off acquiring a new disk, mind you.)

wt0

man: wt(4)

This driver supports the QIC-02 and QIC-32 tape drives from Archive and Wangtek.

MII Network Cards

The Media Independent Interface is an abstraction layer to improve code sharing in network cards. Almost all modern network cards use the MII interface. The following table lists these cards. When you use these cards in a kernel configuration, they must be attached to a "mii" entry.

exphy* at mii? phy ?

There is no "root" mii entry, however; don't let that confuse you.

Non-MII Network Cards

The following network cards do not require the MII interface; they're just boring old cards.

Gigabit Ethernet Cards

Gigabit ethernet cards do not require the MII interface.

Wireless Network Cards

These wireless network cards also do not require the MII interface.

Non-Ethernet Network Cards

The following cards are all network cards, but do not speak Ethernet:

fpa

man: fpa(4)

This driver supports all versions of the DEC DEFPA FDDI card.

fea

man: fea(4)

This supports all versions of the DEC DEFEA FDDI card.

tr

man: none

This supports a variety of token-ring cards, including the IBM TROPIC based cards and some 3Com cards.

lmc

man: lmc(4)

This driver supports the Lan Media Corporation's SSI, DS1, HSSI, and DS3 PCI Wide Area Network cards. You can use these drivers to make your own WAN router.

CardBus Devices

CardBus is the 32-bit removable card standard, the successor to PCMCIA. It has two additional devices. All modern laptops use CardBus (even though some marketing literature still calls it a PC Card interface). These really aren't optional; if you have a CardBus interface (the cbb driver), you really need the following two entries to actually use any removable cards.

cardslot

man: cardbus(4)

The cardslot is a particular hardware slot attached to the cardbus.

cardbus

man: cardbus(4)

This device is somewhat badly named; it's the glue between a CardBus card and the CardBus slot on the system.

BIOS Devices

BIOS devices are attached to the system's BIOS, and only to the BIOS. As such, they rate their own section — at least, they don't fit in anywhere else!

This supports Advanced Power Management. APM has recently been replaced by ACPI, and is no longer considered quite so advanced.

The APM driver has several options, controlled by flags. Depending on the version of APM you have, you may need to change the flags. You can do this on the GENERIC kernel with config(8), but if you're rebuilding the kernel you might as well set it here. If you don't know which version of APM your hardware uses, check your hardware manual. For more information, see apm(4).

pcibios0 at bios0 flags 0x0000

The PCI BIOS handles tasks such as assigning memory addresses and IRQs automatically. This gets rid of all the icky plug-and-play crud that plagues ISA cards. Sadly, not all PCI BIOS manufacturers do things correctly, and the OpenBSD driver needs to implement some magic to make problems go away. If you have problems with your PCI bus, definitely take a look at pcibios(4) for a whole list of flags that might address your particular problem.

Serial Ports

Serial ports are some of the oldest computer interfaces. Modems, mice, and terminals have all at one time or another been attached to serial ports.

pccom

man: com(4)

This driver handles standard PC serial ports, generally known as COM ports.

com

man: com(4)

The com driver supports non-i386-specific serial ports, such as those found on multiport serial cards.

puc

man: puc(4)

This driver handles PCI cards that contain standard serial and parallel ports. The ports on these cards cannot usually be used as serial consoles; PCI cards get dynamic hardware addresses, which makes hard-coding the serial console address difficult. (If you can get a serial port on one of these cards to have the same I/O port and memory address as one of the first four i386 serial ports, it would work. None of my cards do this reliably, but yours might.) You can attach pccom and lpt devices to this as necessary to have your kernel recognize your ports.

ast

man: ast(4)

This driver supports 4-port serial cards that use the EIA RS-232C interface. You need a com device attached to this device in your kernel to have the actual ports be recognized.

addcom

man: addcom(4)

This driver supports the Addonics FlexPort 8/S 8-port serial ISA board. It probably works on the 4-port version as well. You'll want to add a com device for each port on the board.

rtfps

man: rtfps(4)

This driver supports the IBM RT boards that multiplex up to four serial ports. You need to attach com devices to this card for it to work.

hsq

man: hsq(4)

This driver supports 4-port Hostess-compatible serial port cards. Attach pccom devices to it to have them recognized.

cy

man: cy(4)

This driver supports the Cyclades Cyclom-4Y, Cyclom-8Y, and Cyclom-16Y multiport serial cards.

cz

man: cz

This driver supports the Cyclades-Z multiport serial cards.

Console Drivers

The drivers here are all part of the platform-independent console system, which is wscons(8). There is no hardware for any of these drivers; they are all abstractions on top of the hardware platform's native keyboard, mouse, and display system. As such, each device needs to be attached to the proper physical hardware.

wsdisplay

man: wsdisplay(4)

This is the display driver that actually places characters on the screen. You must have this device in your kernel if you want to use any sort of monitor.

wskbd

man: wskbd(4)

This driver manages keyboards in the wscons framework. Again, if you want to use your keyboard you need to have this device in your kernel.

wsmouse

man: wsmouse(4)

This driver abstracts mouse hardware. You just have to configure the wsmouse driver via wsconsctl(8), and the wscons framework translates that to the correct instructions for whatever hardware you have.

USB Devices

The Universal Serial Bus is a very popular standard for removable devices. Not only do you need to define your USB bus and USB controller in your kernel, you need to list drivers for any and all USB devices you have. Since it's very hard to tell what might be plugged into a USB controller, I recommend leaving any and all USB devices in your kernel configuration.

uhub

This is a USB hub. Every USB system needs at least one USB hub, plugged into the USB bus like so.

uhub* at usb?

The USB hub is one of those rare devices that can daisy-chain onto itself — you can plug a USB hub into another USB hub, as demonstrated here.

uhub* at uhub? port ? configuration ?

You can learn more about OpenBSD's USB support in general in usb(4).

uhid

man: uhid(4)

This device supports USB devices that do not have specific drivers. The most common devices of this sort are joysticks and digitizer tablets.

ucom

man: umodem(4)

This is a COM port that runs on the USB modem. Many USB devices, such as modems, Handspring Visors, and serial adapters, need an old-fashioned serial connection. All of these devices actually talk to a ucom device that attaches to the actual device driver.

ubsa

man: ubsa(4)

This is a Belkin USB serial adapter that many ucom(4) devices can connect to, and can behave much like a serial terminal.

umodem

man: umodem(4)

This driver attaches USB modems to the USB subsystem. Don't try to communicate with your modem via the umodem device, however; instead, talk to the ucom device.

uvisor

man: uvisor(4)

Yes, you can plug your Visor into your OpenBSD box and sync it, courtesy of this device driver and some add-on software. This device driver works much like the umodem driver, though; you will actually talk to the ucom driver that automatically attaches to this device.

uftdi

man: uftdi(4)

This supports a variety of USB serial adapters based on the FT8U100AX chipset, such as the D-Link DSB-H4SMK, the Inland UAS111, and the QVS USC-1000. Again, you want to attach a ucom device to this to make it work properly.

man: uplcom(4)

This device driver supports USB serial adapters based on the Prolific PL-2303 USB-to-RS232 chipset.

man: uaudio(4)

This supports USB sound cards. A USB sound device needs to have an audio driver attached to it.

ulpt

man: ulpt(4)

This is a USB printer. Unlike the serial-port devices, you can work directly with a USB printer instead of attaching a parallel port on top of it.

ukbd

man: ukbd(4)

This is a fairly boring, common USB keyboard. You'll need to attach the console pseudo-devices to it to make it work.

umass

man: umass(4)

This supports any USB storage devices, such as removable flash disks, digital cameras, and so on. OpenBSD uses a SCSI interface to connect to these devices, so be sure to put a SCSI bus on top of your umass driver. The driver is described in umass(4).

ums

man: ums(4)

These are USB mice. You'll need to attach the console mouse device to this for the mouse to actually work.

aue

man: aue(4)

This support USB Ethernet adapters with the ADMtek AN986 Pegasus chipset. Many different USB ethernet devices use this device. It interoperates with the Media Independent Interface (mii) network system. See aue(4) for a full list of cards supported by this driver.

cue

man: cue(4)

This supports USB Ethernet adapters built with Computer Access Technology Corporation's USB-EL1202A chipset. This includes only a handful of devices.

kue

man: kue(4)

This driver supports USB Ethernet adapters built around the Kawasaki KL5KUSB101B chipset.

upl

man: upl(4)

This is a direct host-to-host connection over USB, much like parallel port "Laplink" connections.

urio

man: urio(4)

The urio device supports the Rio MP3 player. See urio(4) for examples on how to use the Rio on your OpenBSD machine.

uscanner

man: uscanner(4)

This device supports common USB scanners. To actually use the scanner, however, you need to add on a scanner software package. The most popular one is SANE, but people have reported mixed results with scanners on OpenBSD. See uscanner(4) for the list of supported USB scanners.

usscanner

man: usscanner(4)

This driver supports USB scanners that operate via a SCSI interface, such as the HP5300. You'll need to attach a SCSI bus to this device for it to work. Again, scanning under OpenBSD is tricky and will require some work.

man: uyap(4)

This device driver supports the YAP Internet phone. At the time of this writing, it's not enabled in the default kernel, but you can choose to add it in.

ugen

man: ugen(4)

This is a driver for "generic" USB devices. Any USB device should attach to the ugen driver. It may not work as you expect, but some experimentation will probably get some functionality out of the device. See ugen(4) for more than you really want to know about generic USB devices.

Multimedia Hardware

OpenBSD supports a wide variety of multimedia hardware, including sound cards, video capture cards, and so on.

pcppi

man: pcppi(4)

This driver supports system speakers in i386 hardware. All systems with sound hardware need this.

sysbeep

man: pcppi(4)

This is a fake "keyboard beep" generated through the pcppi speaker.

spkr

man: speaker(4)

This is a simple interface to the system pcppi speaker, allowing programs to generate basic tones.

midi

man: midi(4)

This driver supports MIDI hardware: external or internal synthesizers, soundcard MIDI port, and so on.

opl

man: opl(4)

This supports the Yamaha OPL2 and OPL3 FM synthesizer chips.

audio

man: audio(4)

This provides a generic interface to any sound card attached to the system.

bktr

man: bktr(4)

This driver supports PCI video capture boards based on the Brooktree Bt848/ 849-878/879 chip. This includes most of the capture cards on the market.

joy

man: joy(4)

This supports the game controller, which in turn handles up to two joysticks.

The following table lists the common sound card drivers, their man pages, and the cards they handle. You must attach an audio(4) driver to each of these to actually use them.

Radio Support

OpenBSD supports a variety of radio tuners.

radio

man: radio(4)

This is a card-independent radio management layer. You need a radio device attached to any radio card in your system.

The following table lists all radio cards supported by OpenBSD, their man pages, and the hardware they support:

Hardware Crypto Cards

OpenBSD supports a variety of hardware cryptographic accelerators. Any OpenSSL system calls will be processed by the crypto accelerator, and not on the main CPU. This greatly aids secure web servers and other crypto-intensive programs.