Install Broadcom BCM5786 Driver in Oracle Solaris 10

(BCM5786 is the Broadcom Netxtreme Fast Ethernet BCM 95786)

Although Oracle Solaris 10 comes with driver support for many of Broadcom NICs, however it does not support BCM5786 out-of-box. BCM5786 is a popular NIC among workstations, notably on IBM (Lenovo) ThinkCenter series.

Broadcom official driver for BCM5786 does not have Solaris support, so unfortunately we must find it elsewhere.

Digging up older version of Broadcom driver archives, I noticed that although the latest driver (version 15) has not Solaris support, but in fact Broadcom used to support this model for Solaris in driver version 11 and 12. So it is a matter of downloading and installing an older Broadcom driver which is compatible with BCM5786.

To find older versions of the driver:

• Visit http://www.broadcom.com/support/ethernet_nic/netxtreme_server.php?legacy=1
• Or Google Search "Broadcom sol86-12.2.zip"
• Or Google Search "Broadcom sol86-11.7.2.zip" (this is an older driver)

Oracle Solaris 10 identifies BCM5786 as "pci14e4,169a". According to the driver's "postinstall" file, the PCI ID is indeed supported:


devices="pci14e4,1 pci14e4,2 pci14e4,3 pci14e4,5
pci14e4,6 pci14e4,7 pci14e4,8 pci14e4,8008
pci14e4,8009 pci14e4,9 pci14e4,a pci14e4,c
pci173b,3e8 pci10b7,1000 pci10b7,1004 pci10b7,1006
pci10b7,1007 pci10b7,1008 pcie11,c1 pcie11,7c
pcie11,85 pcie11,ca pcie11,cb pcie11,bb
pci14e4,1644 pci14e4,1645 pci14e4,1646 pci14e4,1647
pci14e4,1648 pci14e4,164d pci14e4,1653 pci14e4,1654
pci14e4,165d pci14e4,166d pci14e4,1696 pci14e4,16a6
pci14e4,16a7 pci14e4,16a8 pci14e4,16c6 pci14e4,16c7
pci14e4,170d pci14e4,1676 pci14e4,167c pci14e4,1677
pci14e4,167d pci14e4,167e pci14e4,1658 pci14e4,1659
pci14e4,169d pci14e4,16f7 pci14e4,16fd pci14e4,16fe
pci14e4,16dd pci14e4,1600 pci14e4,1601 pci14e4,1668
pci14e4,1669 pci14e4,1678 pci14e4,1679 pci14e4,166a
pci14e4,166b pci14e4,167b pci14e4,1673 pci14e4,169c
pci14e4,169b pci14e4,1693 pci14e4,167f pci14e4,169a <------ over here
pci14e4,165a pci14e4,1698 pxi14e4,1684 pci14e4,165b"


So there we are:

• Download the driver and unzip
• Burn the unzipped folder onto a CD
• Copy the folder onto Solaris 10
• Run pkgadd -d BRCMbcme.pkg all
• Follow the steps on your screen to complete driver installation
• Reboot the computer
• Activate network interface with ifconfig bcme0 plumb up and subsequently ifconfig bcme0 dhcp start