From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: David Hollis Subject: Re: mii-tool gigabit support. Date: Fri, 29 Sep 2006 12:12:58 -0400 Message-ID: <1159546378.2761.5.camel@dhollis-lnx.sunera.com> References: <20060926145113.7a6791c8@freekitty> <4519A1D6.1050802@pobox.com> <451AD1D6.4030708@intel.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: dean gaudet , Jeff Garzik , Stephen Hemminger , dhinds@pcmcia.sourceforge.org, netdev@vger.kernel.org Return-path: Received: from vms046pub.verizon.net ([206.46.252.46]:58044 "EHLO vms046pub.verizon.net") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932318AbWI2QOb (ORCPT ); Fri, 29 Sep 2006 12:14:31 -0400 Received: from smtp.davehollis.com ([72.64.146.245]) by vms046.mailsrvcs.net (Sun Java System Messaging Server 6.2-4.02 (built Sep 9 2005)) with ESMTPA id <0J6D008693S1L3W2@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> for netdev@vger.kernel.org; Fri, 29 Sep 2006 11:14:26 -0500 (CDT) In-reply-to: <451AD1D6.4030708@intel.com> To: Auke Kok Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: netdev.vger.kernel.org On Wed, 2006-09-27 at 12:32 -0700, Auke Kok wrote: > dumping registers in readable format is an extension that needs to be > implemented per driver. Not all nics have done this - we just did it > ourselves > for ixgb, and I saw skge/sky2 just fly by this week. This has always bothered me a bit with ethtool. It really stinks that we have to actually write code and generate patches and get everyone to update a utility just to be able to get this type of access. I see two ways to make the situation better: 1) add extensions to the drivers themselves to be able to report this which would likely lead to a lot of driver bloat and too much user-space style info (like verbose descriptions of the register and it's purpose) or 2) develop some style of register description definition type of text file, maybe XML, maybe INI style or something stored in /etc/ethtool as .conf or something like that. This way, ethtool doesn't have to be changed/updated/patched/likely-bug-added for every single device known to man. Just a thought. -- David Hollis