Hi
This many not be the right place to ask this question but i don’t know where else to ask… I want to write a PCIe driver to test DMA operations on PCIe. I have a PCIe Atheros AR8132 Network card in my laptop… But i could not find any data sheet that would tell me about the DMA related registers. I could not get in on the atheros website. How else could i know the register details?
See if there is a source for a Linux driver for the card. If not
examine the card, and see what the controller chip is, it may be a 3rd
party that has documentation. If not you are probably out of luck,
except for asking Atheros for documentation, and a lot of firms don’t
want to give stuff like that out.
Don Burn
Windows Filesystem and Driver Consulting
Website: http://www.windrvr.com
Blog: http://msmvps.com/blogs/WinDrvr
“xxxxx@gmail.com” wrote in message
news:xxxxx@ntdev:
> Hi
>
> This many not be the right place to ask this question but i don’t know where else to ask… I want to write a PCIe driver to test DMA operations on PCIe. I have a PCIe Atheros AR8132 Network card in my laptop… But i could not find any data sheet that would tell me about the DMA related registers. I could not get in on the atheros website. How else could i know the register details?
I think you are out of luck. Wi-Fi vendors keep the information you need
private.
On most platforms (Windows, Linux)the Wi-Fi driver sources eventually drill
down to a vendor-provided DLL or export driver the exports functions that
they want to expose. These are just the ordinary connect, etc. stuff.
For some older Wi-Fi chips there may be open source. However, the adapters
using these chips are usually obsolete and found only on eBay.
Good luck,
Thomas
From:
Sent: Thursday, June 07, 2012 10:54 AM
To: “Windows System Software Devs Interest List”
Subject: [ntdev] How to get data sheet for Atheros AR8132 NetworkCard
> Hi
>
> This many not be the right place to ask this question but i don’t know
> where else to ask… I want to write a PCIe driver to test DMA operations
> on PCIe. I have a PCIe Atheros AR8132 Network card in my laptop… But i
> could not find any data sheet that would tell me about the DMA related
> registers. I could not get in on the atheros website. How else could i
> know the register details?
>
> —
> NTDEV is sponsored by OSR
>
> For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
> http://www.osr.com/seminars
>
> To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
> http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer
You may not need source, or even an understanding of the chip. You should
read Joanna Rutkowski’s paper on attacking hypervisors through DMA. She
(and her crew) just dropped an ICMP “echo” request down the stack, with a
target buffer that was forged. Then, when the echo came back, it was DMA’d
to the location specified, with the contents of the request. I thought that
was slick.
(Warning: Any specific detail above may be wrong as I’m not a networking
guy.)
Jake Oshins
Windows Kernel Team
This message offers no warranties and confers no rights.
“Thomas F. Divine” wrote in message news:xxxxx@ntdev…
I think you are out of luck. Wi-Fi vendors keep the information you need
private.
On most platforms (Windows, Linux)the Wi-Fi driver sources eventually drill
down to a vendor-provided DLL or export driver the exports functions that
they want to expose. These are just the ordinary connect, etc. stuff.
For some older Wi-Fi chips there may be open source. However, the adapters
using these chips are usually obsolete and found only on eBay.
Good luck,
Thomas
From:
Sent: Thursday, June 07, 2012 10:54 AM
To: “Windows System Software Devs Interest List”
Subject: [ntdev] How to get data sheet for Atheros AR8132 NetworkCard
> Hi
>
> This many not be the right place to ask this question but i don’t know
> where else to ask… I want to write a PCIe driver to test DMA operations
> on PCIe. I have a PCIe Atheros AR8132 Network card in my laptop… But i
> could not find any data sheet that would tell me about the DMA related
> registers. I could not get in on the atheros website. How else could i
> know the register details?
>
> —
> NTDEV is sponsored by OSR
>
> For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
> http://www.osr.com/seminars
>
> To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
> http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer
xxxxx@gmail.com wrote:
This many not be the right place to ask this question but i don’t know where else to ask… I want to write a PCIe driver to test DMA operations on PCIe. I have a PCIe Atheros AR8132 Network card in my laptop… But i could not find any data sheet that would tell me about the DMA related registers. I could not get in on the atheros website. How else could i know the register details?
It would be easier for you to get a simple PCIe experimenter’s board, so
you know exactly what lives where.
What do you hope to test? DMA on PCI and PCIe is pretty well understood
at this point.
–
Tim Roberts, xxxxx@probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.
You won’t get the datasheet if you aren’t their partner or buying a lot of
chips from them. A wifi chip generally is very unpleasant to program.
As other suggested, you could get some pci experimental card from general
PCI bridge vendor. Or you could build one with a PLX chip. It’s not
difficult if you know basic electronics and FPGA programming.
You can also use some off shelf hardware i.e. 3com905 NIC. It’s easy to
program and is easy to get from ebay. The datasheet for 3com905 is publicly
available and very detail.
Calvin
On Thu, Jun 7, 2012 at 7:54 AM, wrote:
> Hi
>
> This many not be the right place to ask this question but i don’t know
> where else to ask… I want to write a PCIe driver to test DMA operations on
> PCIe. I have a PCIe Atheros AR8132 Network card in my laptop… But i could
> not find any data sheet that would tell me about the DMA related registers.
> I could not get in on the atheros website. How else could i know the
> register details?
>
> —
> NTDEV is sponsored by OSR
>
> For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
> http://www.osr.com/seminars
>
> To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
> http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer
>
Thomas,
A couple of observations:
2.When it comes to Atheros wireless cards, sources for their Linux drivers (at least for some of them)
are available as well, and can be found at …/drivers/net/wireless/ath. For example, right now I am posting from my laptop via wireless connection, and its wireless Atheros card happens to be driven by a driver built from the sources located at …/drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath9k.
Anton Bassov
Thanks for point that out. I feel really stupid now. (my bad!)
OTOH, the 802.11 driver “sources” that I have seen (Windows, OpenWRT) all
dead-end at a vendor provided component that hides the chipset-specific
details.
I’ll look at those you mentioned and see what I have been missing.
Thanks, Anton!
Thomas
From:
Sent: Friday, June 08, 2012 12:31 PM
To: “Windows System Software Devs Interest List”
Subject: RE:[ntdev] How to get data sheet for Atheros AR8132 NetworkCard
>
> Thomas,
>
>
>
> A couple of observations:
>
> 1. The particular NIC that the OP had mentioned is not 802.11 - it is
> 802.3 (Atheros provides both wired and wireless cards). Its Linux driver’s
> source can be found in the official kernel tree at
> …/drivers/net/ethernet/atheros/atl1c
>
> 2.When it comes to Atheros wireless cards, sources for their Linux drivers
> (at least for some of them)
> are available as well, and can be found at …/drivers/net/wireless/ath.
> For example, right now I am posting from my laptop via wireless
> connection, and its wireless Atheros card happens to be driven by a
> driver built from the sources located at
> …/drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath9k.
>
>
> Anton Bassov
>
> —
> NTDEV is sponsored by OSR
>
> For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
> http://www.osr.com/seminars
>
> To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
> http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer
“Thomas F. Divine” wrote in message news:xxxxx@ntdev…
> OTOH, the 802.11 driver “sources” that I have seen (Windows, OpenWRT) all
> dead-end at a vendor provided component that hides the chipset-specific
> details.
Yes, without knowing the chipset firmware it may be hard to understand what
exactly the host driver does with the device. Nevertheless it should be
easy to spot the DMA related parts.
AFAK no wi-fi vendor has open-sourced the firmware, because of
a simple reason: if anybody else could tamper with the radio layer,
our products won’t be able to comply with FCC and other such regulations,
and we won’t be able to sell them. Linuxoids hissed and cursed, but
eventualy had to agree that binary blobs are better than no wi-fi at all.
– pa
Thomas,
OTOH, the 802.11 driver “sources” that I have seen (Windows, OpenWRT) all dead-end at a
vendor provided component that hides the chipset-specific details.
Well, some Atheros 802.11 devices do not require any firmware - all hardware access is performed directly through the driver. AFAIK, this is how it works with all current PCI and PCI-E Atheros wireless cards. For USB ones, things are even more interesting - Atheros made firmware sources for some of them available under GPLv2…
Anton Bassov