From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1761372AbYDKTba (ORCPT ); Fri, 11 Apr 2008 15:31:30 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1758617AbYDKTbT (ORCPT ); Fri, 11 Apr 2008 15:31:19 -0400 Received: from 1wt.eu ([62.212.114.60]:2315 "EHLO 1wt.eu" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1758454AbYDKTbT (ORCPT ); Fri, 11 Apr 2008 15:31:19 -0400 Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 21:25:19 +0200 From: Willy Tarreau To: Matthew Wilcox Cc: Linus Torvalds , Christoph Hellwig , "Kok, Auke" , Ingo Molnar , Jeff Garzik , Linux Kernel Mailing List , NetDev , e1000-list , linux-pci maillist , Andrew Morton , "David S. Miller" , Jesse Brandeburg , "Ronciak, John" , "Allan, Bruce W" , Greg KH , Arjan van de Ven , "Rafael J. Wysocki" Subject: Re: [patch] e1000=y && e1000e=m regression fix Message-ID: <20080411192519.GA8474@1wt.eu> References: <47FE8566.5040809@intel.com> <20080411112653.GC9205@elte.hu> <20080411113644.GA7767@infradead.org> <20080411121606.GA25661@elte.hu> <47FF9060.5040202@intel.com> <20080411164542.GA4066@infradead.org> <20080411175304.GF11962@parisc-linux.org> <20080411190128.GG11962@parisc-linux.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20080411190128.GG11962@parisc-linux.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.11 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 01:01:28PM -0600, Matthew Wilcox wrote: > On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 11:51:07AM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote: > > Because your version has exactly the same problem that the current code > > has: it asks questions that aren't sensible to people who don't care. It > > also keeps the old E1000 name for "PCI chips only", which means that > > people who just use an old config and ignore new questions will suddenly > > lose their ability to use the E1000 driver if they have a PCI-E card. > > We only support people keeping their old configs after they run 'make > oldconfig', right? At which point they'd be prompted for E1000_SUPPORT. > Presumably they'd think "That's odd. I'm sure I had that selected > before", then select it. Then oldconfig skips over CONFIG_E1000 because > it already knows the answer to that one and they're prompted with a > question about PCIe support. Now something is clearly strange. Perhaps > they look at the help text at this point and it says to go with 'Y' or > 'M' if they're not sure. I don't think this will happen like that. People will simply think as usual "ah, they have added support for new hardware, but since everything in my machine was supported, I don't need it". I think that the correct solution to help people is not at build time, but at run time. The e1000 driver should just *check* if there are PCI-IDs that it used to manage and that it does not anymore, for unclaimed devices, and report a warning message clearly indicating that these devices are not handled anymore and that for this, the user must load e1000e. It will : a) help people know what to load if they need to update modprobe.conf b) just require a new "make menuconfig;make modules" after the poor guy has been caught. It's not a problem to have to tweak the config and reboot several times, provided that the user is guided. Almost none of us has ever blindly upgraded without a few post-boot adjustments. > That's the most important bit of help texts for me. Do I want Control > Groups? Will my machine break if I don't select them? I have no idea > what a 'process cgroup subsystem' is, and I don't care. But the help > text tells me I can say "n" and nothing will break. Here if people don't know, they will reply "no" too. > > So most users: > > - want to just say "E1000", and not care about type. > > - want to have old configurations continue working (ie if you haev had > > "E1000" driving your hardware before, it should _continue_ to do so, > > with no need to select a _new_ E1000E question! > > > > Nobody wants to care deeply whether it's a PCI-E or PCI chip. In fact, > > it's almost impossible to tell. Here, quickly, tell me which one mine is > > (this is from /sbin/lspci): > > > > 00:19.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82566DM Gigabit Network Connection (rev 02) > > I quite agree. I have no idea either. All I know is that my ICH9 box > didn't work until e1000e was released ;-) I'm pretty sure it's PCI-E, because Linus got caught first ;-) But of course, that should not be an accepted guess method. Willy