From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Dan Faerch Subject: Re: [patch 2/3] drivers/net/ns83820.c: add paramter to disable autonegotiation Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 13:43:28 +0200 Message-ID: <1151408608.20631.28.camel@dan> References: <200606250844.k5P8iasE020794@shell0.pdx.osdl.net> <20060626162928.GA22614@kvack.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: akpm@osdl.org, jeff@garzik.org, netdev@vger.kernel.org, dan@hacker.dk, jgarzik@pobox.com Return-path: Received: from exsmtp01.exserver.dk ([195.69.129.177]:23208 "EHLO exsmtp01.exserver.dk") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932168AbWF0LmV (ORCPT ); Tue, 27 Jun 2006 07:42:21 -0400 To: Benjamin LaHaise In-Reply-To: <20060626162928.GA22614@kvack.org> Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: netdev.vger.kernel.org On Mon, 2006-06-26 at 12:29 -0400, Benjamin LaHaise wrote: > This part is good, although doing something for copper cards needs doing, > which probably means poking around to support the phy properly. I Agree. But i dont have a copper card, nor the knowledge to do this. I was actually hoping that someone could "fill in the blanks". > > Also added a "disable_autoneg" module argument to completely disable > > autoneg on all cards using this driver. > > This is the part I disagree with. Are you sure it isn't a bug in the > link autonegotiation state machine for fibre cards? It should be defaulting > to 1Gbit/full duplex if no autonegotiation is happening, and if it isn't > then that should be fixed instead of papering over things with a config > option. In my setup, we use several fibercards on passive fiber-taps (tx only), thus there is no link partner. If i dont disable autoneg, i simply cant sniff traffic. Skipping the initial autoneg solved the problem. Adding ethtool support was just an extra courtesy upon request. After adding ethtool support, i kept the disable_autoneg option to allow one to operate with default autoneg disabled, and enabling autoneg through ethtool where needed. Sort of a "reverse operation" mode. If there IS a bug in the autoneg statemachine i would have no idea how to fix it. My knowledge of hardware & drivers is unfortunately extremely limited. - Dan