Interphase Tachyon drivers missing.

Interphase Tachyon drivers missing.

[Greg.Chandler]

I went to upgrade my kernel on a couple of boxes yesterday and noticed
that the Interphase Tachyon chipset Fibre Channel driver was removed
from the kernel.  I think 2.6.1 was the last one it was still in.  Was
there a reason it was pulled?
If not, do I have to volunteer to put it back in or can someone with
more skill re-add it?

Re: Interphase Tachyon drivers missing.

[Jeff Garzik]

Greg.Chandler@wellsfargo.com wrote:
> I went to upgrade my kernel on a couple of boxes yesterday and noticed
> that the Interphase Tachyon chipset Fibre Channel driver was removed
> from the kernel.  I think 2.6.1 was the last one it was still in.  Was
> there a reason it was pulled?
> If not, do I have to volunteer to put it back in or can someone with
> more skill re-add it?

It was dropped because it was unmaintained, and quickly falling behind 
mainline.  If it's a maintained driver with an active userbase, we're 
interested...

	Jeff

Re: Interphase Tachyon drivers missing.

[Rolf Eike Beer]

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Greg.Chandler@wellsfargo.com wrote:
> I went to upgrade my kernel on a couple of boxes yesterday and noticed
> that the Interphase Tachyon chipset Fibre Channel driver was removed
> from the kernel.  I think 2.6.1 was the last one it was still in.  Was
> there a reason it was pulled?
> If not, do I have to volunteer to put it back in or can someone with
> more skill re-add it?

I suppose you're talking about the cpqfc driver? I have tried to clean it up 
but gave up. Next try was to rewrite, but due to lack of time there is no 
progress in the last month. The old driver was that horrible coded that noone 
can maintain it. It was originally written for something like Linux 2.2 and 
was never even forward ported completely to 2.4. With the major changes in 
Linux' driver model that went into 2.6 it was nearly unusable anyway. Not 
that the use of it in 2.4 can be encouraged. One of the main problems is the 
severe lack of error handling which you can see alone from the fact that 
there are tons of function returning void even in the critical I/O-path's.

I have heard of at least 3 different people before you (not counting me) that 
would like to have a driver for this one. One even donated some hardware to 
me around last christmas. But nevertheless my lack of time stopped my work on 
this.

Martin, you were hacking on something there too but never showed up some code. 
Is there anything new?

Eike

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RE: Interphase Tachyon drivers missing.

[Greg.Chandler]

My guess is that since it's not in there, I might be the only one who
noticed.  Unfortunatly that looks to be bad news for me...  I have 5
machines with these cards, and my pockets are not so deep as to be able
to replace them with something newer.  

My goal was to get AOE working over the FC card {rather than ethernet}
and retire my FC SAN.  {I have my moments for doing stupid things like
this} {and yes it was a bet....}

I took a brief look at the code {I am no developer, let alone a driver
maintainer} but I think I can get the driver shored up with a current
kernel {I hope}.  The question is will anyone other than me care,
because if not, I doubt that the driver will be re-added from what you
said.


-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Garzik [mailto:jeff@garzik.org] 
Sent: Monday, December 11, 2006 12:03 PM
To: Chandler, Greg
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Interphase Tachyon drivers missing.

Greg.Chandler@wellsfargo.com wrote:
> I went to upgrade my kernel on a couple of boxes yesterday and noticed

> that the Interphase Tachyon chipset Fibre Channel driver was removed 
> from the kernel.  I think 2.6.1 was the last one it was still in.  Was

> there a reason it was pulled?
> If not, do I have to volunteer to put it back in or can someone with 
> more skill re-add it?

It was dropped because it was unmaintained, and quickly falling behind
mainline.  If it's a maintained driver with an active userbase, we're
interested...

	Jeff

RE: Interphase Tachyon drivers missing.

[Greg.Chandler]

I'm not sure about the driver being cpqfc, I know in 2.6.0 & 1 the
driver was definitely iphase.c/h/o
I do know the chipset was used by almost everyone, Compaq/HP/DEC and
Interphase's namebrand cards.

I also know that the driver is still working in 2.4.33 my slackware 11
default kernel picked up the card, which suprised me to say the least...
I won't have time to spend a weekend on it until about christmas. {or
probably christmas day is more likely} Even then I can't make any kind
of promise that I can do anything useful about it...


-----Original Message-----
From: Rolf Eike Beer [mailto:eike-kernel@sf-tec.de] 
Sent: Wednesday, December 13, 2006 3:14 AM
To: Chandler, Greg
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org; Martin K. Petersen
Subject: Re: Interphase Tachyon drivers missing.

Greg.Chandler@wellsfargo.com wrote:
> I went to upgrade my kernel on a couple of boxes yesterday and noticed

> that the Interphase Tachyon chipset Fibre Channel driver was removed 
> from the kernel.  I think 2.6.1 was the last one it was still in.  Was

> there a reason it was pulled?
> If not, do I have to volunteer to put it back in or can someone with 
> more skill re-add it?

I suppose you're talking about the cpqfc driver? I have tried to clean
it up but gave up. Next try was to rewrite, but due to lack of time
there is no progress in the last month. The old driver was that horrible
coded that noone can maintain it. It was originally written for
something like Linux 2.2 and was never even forward ported completely to
2.4. With the major changes in Linux' driver model that went into 2.6 it
was nearly unusable anyway. Not that the use of it in 2.4 can be
encouraged. One of the main problems is the severe lack of error
handling which you can see alone from the fact that there are tons of
function returning void even in the critical I/O-path's.

I have heard of at least 3 different people before you (not counting me)
that would like to have a driver for this one. One even donated some
hardware to me around last christmas. But nevertheless my lack of time
stopped my work on this.

Martin, you were hacking on something there too but never showed up some
code. 
Is there anything new?

Eike

Re: Interphase Tachyon drivers missing.

[Rolf Eike Beer]

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Am Mittwoch, 13. Dezember 2006 17:51 schrieb Greg.Chandler@wellsfargo.com:
> I'm not sure about the driver being cpqfc, I know in 2.6.0 & 1 the
> driver was definitely iphase.c/h/o
> I do know the chipset was used by almost everyone, Compaq/HP/DEC and
> Interphase's namebrand cards.
>
> I also know that the driver is still working in 2.4.33 my slackware 11
> default kernel picked up the card, which suprised me to say the least...
> I won't have time to spend a weekend on it until about christmas. {or
> probably christmas day is more likely} Even then I can't make any kind
> of promise that I can do anything useful about it...

Ok, than we're likely talking about different things. Maybe just another 
driver for that chipset. If I'll ever find some time I'll have a look on this 
one too.

Eike

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Re: Interphase Tachyon drivers missing.

[Martin K. Petersen]

>>>>> "Eike" == Rolf Eike Beer <eike-kernel@sf-tec.de> writes:

Eike> Am Mittwoch, 13. Dezember 2006 17:51 schrieb
Eike> Greg.Chandler@wellsfargo.com:
>> I'm not sure about the driver being cpqfc, I know in 2.6.0 & 1 the
>> driver was definitely iphase.c/h/o I do know the chipset was used
>> by almost everyone, Compaq/HP/DEC and Interphase's namebrand cards.
>> 
>> I also know that the driver is still working in 2.4.33 my slackware
>> 11 default kernel picked up the card, which suprised me to say the
>> least...  I won't have time to spend a weekend on it until about
>> christmas. {or probably christmas day is more likely} Even then I
>> can't make any kind of promise that I can do anything useful about
>> it...

Eike> Ok, than we're likely talking about different things. Maybe just
Eike> another driver for that chipset. If I'll ever find some time
Eike> I'll have a look on this one too.

The ip5526 driver was removed way back due to lack of interest.  It
only drove a limited set of cards from one vendor.

The interphase cards used a "real" Tachyon (HPFC-5000) chip.  The
controllers we usually discuss in the context of cpqfc have TachLite
(HPFC-51xx and later).

Tachyon is a really old chip and it's not completely compatible with
TachLite from a programming perspective.  It also doesn't have
contemporary features like - cough - PCI-support.  The
GSC/EISA/PCI/whatever glue chip was vendor-specific.

I'm sure the ip5526 driver could be revived -- it's not very big.  But
I doubt there are many cards out there that haven't been scrapped.

-- 
Martin K. Petersen      http://mkp.net/