From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1754912AbYE2PFY (ORCPT ); Thu, 29 May 2008 11:05:24 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1752778AbYE2PFF (ORCPT ); Thu, 29 May 2008 11:05:05 -0400 Received: from earthlight.etchedpixels.co.uk ([81.2.110.250]:57351 "EHLO lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-FAIL) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751751AbYE2PFE (ORCPT ); Thu, 29 May 2008 11:05:04 -0400 Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 15:45:25 +0100 From: Alan Cox To: James Cammarata Cc: Andrew Morton , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Linux Netdev List Subject: Re: [PATCH] net: add ability to clear stats via ethtool - e1000/pcnet32 Message-ID: <20080529154525.3916c7b5@core> In-Reply-To: <483EA2D1.8050603@sngx.net> References: <482DA5B6.1020606@sngx.net> <482DB46A.8020103@cosmosbay.com> <482EF192.4070707@sngx.net> <482F5113.5090703@cosmosbay.com> <482F610D.2080108@sngx.net> <20080518003104.GK28241@solarflare.com> <482FBA09.80201@sngx.net> <483E0AAE.2020107@sngx.net> <20080528221118.63da4092.akpm@linux-foundation.org> <483EA2D1.8050603@sngx.net> X-Mailer: Claws Mail 3.3.1 (GTK+ 2.12.5; x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu) Organization: Red Hat UK Cyf., Amberley Place, 107-111 Peascod Street, Windsor, Berkshire, SL4 1TE, Y Deyrnas Gyfunol. Cofrestrwyd yng Nghymru a Lloegr o'r rhif cofrestru 3798903 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org > > Many of the kernel's accounting accumulators cannot be reset. We > > handle that in userspace tools by using subtraction. > > I don't think that should preclude the ability to reset these, unless it is > shown that it would break something very badly. For one quite a few of the network cards keep the stats in hardware and don't neccessarily have a way to reset them. In other cases there is a mix of OS accumulated stats bulk updated by overflow events on the device itself. Its a lot of complexity, and changes all over the places for the sake of a trivial userspace change. I would suggest you instead write a quick bit of perl or python that fetches the stats and then updates every second with the changes. Alan