RE: [RFC] ethtool: Display reg dump length via get driver info.

[Ben Hutchings <bhutchings@solarflare.com>]

On Fri, 2011-03-18 at 14:52 -0700, Ajit.Khaparde@Emulex.Com wrote:
> ______________________________________
> From: Ben Hutchings [bhutchings@solarflare.com]
> Sent: Friday, March 18, 2011 4:32 PM
> To: Khaparde, Ajit
> Cc: netdev@vger.kernel.org
> Subject: Re: [RFC] ethtool: Display reg dump length via get driver info.
> 
> 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?
> 
> Well yes. That's true.
> 
> >> 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.
> 
> Yes, it is a constant size. And will always be the max size possible.
> I just want to see if I can get the length, without really making the ethtoool -d call.
> Because that will trigger the dump too.
> At that moment, I may not be interested in the data itself.

OK, so what you're really interested in is 'does this version of the
driver support register dump'?

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.