From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Ben Hutchings Subject: Re: [RFC] ethtool: Display reg dump length via get driver info. Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2011 21:32:19 +0000 Message-ID: <1300483939.2589.46.camel@bwh-desktop> References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: netdev@vger.kernel.org To: Ajit Khaparde Return-path: Received: from mail.solarflare.com ([216.237.3.220]:46853 "EHLO exchange.solarflare.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1757444Ab1CRVcW (ORCPT ); Fri, 18 Mar 2011 17:32:22 -0400 In-Reply-To: Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Fri, 2011-03-18 at 16:06 -0500, Ajit Khaparde wrote: > Devices like BE store Reg Dump Data in the hardware. Where else would it be? > This change will allow to just peek into the hardware > to see if any data is available for a dump and analysis, > without actually dumping the register data. [...] This is wrong. ethtool_ops::get_regs_len really should return a constant, otherwise ethtool (and the kernel) cannot allocate a buffer of the right size. If the size of a dump really does vary then make it return the maximum possible size for the device. Ben. -- Ben Hutchings, Senior Software Engineer, Solarflare Not speaking for my employer; that's the marketing department's job. They asked us to note that Solarflare product names are trademarked.