Re: [PATCH] PCI: nVidia's MCP61 ethernet card needs quirk for wrong class

[Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@pobox.com>]

Jiri Kosina wrote:
> On Mon, 1 Oct 2007, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> 
>> There are other network devices that do not claim 
>> PCI_CLASS_NETWORK_ETHERNET either.  
> 
> Nor any other PCI_CLASS_NETWORK subclass?

Correct.


>> Since this is a purely cosmetic issue -- said userland tools would need 
>> to support weird cases _anyway_ -- I am not inclined to apply the patch.
> 
> What would you recommend as a method for userspace to detect whether given 
> hardware is a network card, supposing that there is no driver bound to it 
> yet?

Note the mention of "weird cases"

You come up with a general method, then you have to deal with exceptions 
to that general method.

Another example:  8139too and 8139cp both claim to support 
(0x10EC,0x8139) PCI IDs.  The distro installer needs additional 
information to know to read the PCI revision, which is what determines 
whether or not to use 8139cp driver.

Sometimes life is just not as simple as you would like it to be :)

	Jeff