Realtek r8152 driver for ESXi

EnLabs USB 2.0 to Network Converter, USB 2.0 to 10/100 Mbps Fast RJ45 Ethernet LAN Network Adapter(REALTEK RTL8152B chipset,Macbook, Chromebook, Windows 8.1 and More, Plug and Play) Connector A: 1x USB 2.0 male; Connector B: 1x 10/100 Mbps Ethernet female; Model #: U2RJ458152B; Item #: 9SIACJF7Z05088; Return Policy: View Return Policy $. Nov 17, 2016  The USB Ethernet drivers are dependent on two legacy modules (usb and usbnet); the modules are still available in ESXi 6.5, but will not load by default. My first attempt at loading the USB Ethernet drivers failed miserably.

Key features:

• Supports Realtek RTL8153 and RTL8152
• TCP, UDP and IPv4 checksum offload (RX and TX)
• TCP, UDP and IPv6 checksum offload (RX and TX)
• Scatter-Gather support
• TCP Segmentation Offload support
• Wake on LAN support
• VLAN support
• Jumbo Frames (9k)
• Energy Efficient Ethernet (EEE)

Known issues

• Unloading the module manually is not supported
  • The following message appears on vmkernel.log:
    Failed to close vmnic32: not ready. Flags 0x1140

This message can be safely ignored, however, if the module is reloaded, the vmnic number will change

###Table of Contents

• Setup

Tested Devices

Tested by Glen Kemp

USB 2.0 Adapter (RTL8152B Chipset)

Tested by Glen Kemp

Required Software

CentOS 5.3-x86 64 bit DVD ISO - http://mirror.ash.fastserv.com/centos/5.3/isos/x86_64/CentOS-5.3-x86_64-bin-DVD.iso

Powerpc for mac os x. ESXi 6.0 and 6.5

VMware ESXi 6.0 source code (VMware-ESXI-60U2-ODP.iso) and build toolchain (VMware-TOOLCHAIN-ODP-vsphere60u2-Mar-01-2016.iso)

• ESXi 6.0 Update 2 OSS Download - https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/details?downloadGroup=ESXI60U2_OSS&productId=491

ESXi 5.5

VMware ESXi 5.5 source code (VMware-ESX-5.5.0u03-ODP.iso) and build toolchain (VMware-550u3-TOOLCHAIN-ODP_21_July_2015.iso)

• ESXi 5.5 Update 3 OSS Download - https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/details?downloadGroup=ESXI55U3_OSS&productId=353

ESXi 5.1

VMware ESXi 5.1 source code and build toolchain are both included in a single file (VMware-esx-open-source-5.1.0u2.oss.tar).

• ESXi 5.1 Update 2 OSS Download - https://my.vmware.com/group/vmware/details?downloadGroup=VSPHERE_51U2_OSS&productId=290#

Setup

The embedded documentation for the ESXi open source disclosure packages recommends the build should be performed on a CentOS 5.3 x64 system to produce 64-bit packages. There are other systems mentioned (CentOS 32-bit, Red Hat, FreeBSD and Windows), so take your pick!

To make life easier, I customised the Kickstart file provided with the ESXi 5.5 Toolchain ISO (under the config folder) to build a CentOS 5.3 x64 server VM. Once it is up and running, we deviate a bit from the instructions provided by VMware.

The initial build directory structure should be:

The next steps are a bit different, depending on whether the build environment is being prepared for ESXi 5.1 or later versions:

Prepare the build environment

ESXi 5.1

Extract the contents of the compressed tar archive to /build/vsphere:

You are now ready to compile the build toolchain:

glibc

binutils

gcc

Unlike ESXi 5.1, the ODP source code and the build toolchain for 5.5 and 6.0 are distributed as two separate ISO images. The two ISOs include hundreds of packages, but only a small subset is actually required to build the drivers.

ESXi 5.5

Copy the vmkdrivers-gpl folder from the ODP ISO (VMware-ESX-5.5.0u03-ODP.iso) to /build/vsphere/

Note: The above assumes that /cdrom is the mount point for the ISO/Physical DVD — your environment might differ.

The toolchain ISO (VMware-550u3-TOOLCHAIN-ODP_21_July_2015.iso) includes the source for multiple libraries and tools, but only glibc, binutils and gcc at specific versions are required.

Note: The above assumes that /cdrom is the mount point for the ISO/Physical DVD — your environment might differ.

Compile the build toolchain:

glibc

binutils

gcc

ESXi 6.0

Copy the vmkdrivers-gpl folder from the ODP ISO (VMware-ESXI-60U2-ODP.iso) to /build/vsphere/

Note: The above assumes that /cdrom is the mount point for the ISO/Physical DVD — your environment might differ.

The toolchain ISO (VMware-TOOLCHAIN-ODP-vsphere60u2-Mar-01-2016.iso) includes the source for multiple libraries and tools, but only glibc, binutils and gcc at specific versions are required.

Note: The above assumes that /cdrom is the mount point for the ISO/Physical DVD — your environment might differ.

Compile the build toolchain:

glibc

binutils

gcc

ESXi 6.5

The ODB source and toolchain for 6.5 are completely broken and won't produce a working driver. However, there are no differences between the 6.0 and 6.5 source files, as VMware is preparing to drop support for legacy drivers.

Please follow the instructions as if compiling for ESXi 6.0, noting the changes highlighted in the sections below.

Building the driver

There is a little bit more preparation to be done to build the driver. Again, some of the steps are different depending on the version of ESXi.

Common

Create the directory for the driver's source code. The same source files are used to build the driver on all environments.

Create the directory that will hold the driver's namespace dependencies map:

ESXi 5.1

ESXi 5.5

ESXi 6.0

ESXi 6.5

Finally, copy the appropriate build script to /build/vsphere/vmkdrivers-gpl and compile the driver.

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ESXi 5.1

ESXi 5.5

ESXi 6.0 and 6.5