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Message-ID: <48283316.2080100@FreeBSD.org>
Date: Mon, 12 May 2008 13:07:50 +0100
From: "Bruce M. Simpson" <bms@FreeBSD.org>
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To: Volker <volker@vwsoft.com>
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Cc: net@freebsd.org, Marius Strobl <marius@alchemy.franken.de>
Subject: Re: how to identify a PHY?
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Volker wrote:
> ...
> In short my original question better reads as "how do I know the kind of
> phy if no driver has been attached". Can one retrieve that information
> out of a verbose boot dmesg (from probing messages)?
>   

You can't determine which PHY is in use unless a driver is attached, 
because it's necessary to attach a driver in order to access the card's 
MII registers. Same with any other OS.

If no PHY driver attached, but a NIC driver attached, you should see 
this message:
    device_printf(dev, "MII without any PHY!\n");

It sounds like someone needs to instrument the code path mii_phy_probe() 
to print useful information in the situation you describe.

cheers
BMS