Network drivers

Network services are started from the io-pkt* command, which is responsible for loading in the required .so files.

Note: For dynamic control of network drivers, you can simply use mount and umount to start and stop drivers at the command line. For example:

mount -T io-pkt devn-ne2000.so

For more information, see mount in the Utilities Reference.

Two levels of .so files are started, based on the command-line options given to io-pkt*:

-d specifies driver .so files
-p specifies protocol .so files.

The -d option lets you choose the hardware driver that knows how to talk to a particular card. For example, choosing -d ne2000 will cause io-pkt* to load devn-ne2000.so to access an NE-2000-compatible network card. You may specify additional command-line options after the -d, such as the interrupt vector to be used by the card.

The -p option lets you choose the protocol driver that deals with a particular protocol. As with the -d option, you would specify command-line options after the -p for the driver, such as the IP address for a particular interface.

For more information about network services, see the devn-*, and io-pkt entries in the Utilities Reference.