From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Ben Hutchings Subject: RE: [net-next-2.6 RFC PATCH] ethtool: allow custom interval for physical identification Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2011 17:28:06 +0100 Message-ID: <1302625686.2880.24.camel@bwh-desktop> References: <20110411231635.9339.36369.stgit@gitlad.jf.intel.com> <20110411162601.6686f169@nehalam> <8DD2590731AB5D4C9DBF71A877482A90018A2A30A9@orsmsx509.amr.corp.intel.com> <1302566453.5282.585.camel@localhost> <8DD2590731AB5D4C9DBF71A877482A90018A2A315B@orsmsx509.amr.corp.intel.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Stephen Hemminger , "netdev@vger.kernel.org" To: "Allan, Bruce W" Return-path: Received: from mail.solarflare.com ([216.237.3.220]:28323 "EHLO exchange.solarflare.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1755947Ab1DLQ2K (ORCPT ); Tue, 12 Apr 2011 12:28:10 -0400 In-Reply-To: <8DD2590731AB5D4C9DBF71A877482A90018A2A315B@orsmsx509.amr.corp.intel.com> Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Mon, 2011-04-11 at 18:07 -0700, Allan, Bruce W wrote: > >-----Original Message----- > >From: Ben Hutchings [mailto:bhutchings@solarflare.com] > >Sent: Monday, April 11, 2011 5:01 PM > >To: Allan, Bruce W > >Cc: Stephen Hemminger; netdev@vger.kernel.org > >Subject: RE: [net-next-2.6 RFC PATCH] ethtool: allow custom interval for > >physical identification > > > >I noticed that some drivers did this. Do you know if these OEMs expect > >this of all hardware, or do they actually want different vendors' > >hardware to blink in different ways? If it's a common requirement to > >blink at 2 Hz then let's use that frequency for all the drivers that > >want to be called periodically. > > > >Ben. > > Sorry, I don't know. I'll ask around, but doubt I will get a definitive > answer. I enquired here and found that we do have an OEM specifying 1 Hz. > FWIW, without digging too deep into how other drivers identify their > respective ports through software, it appears it was split: > * bnx2*, cxgb3, niu, s2io, sfc, sky2, tg3 - once per second > * e100*, igb, ixgb*, pcnet32, ewrk3, cxgb4 - approx. twice per second > > AFAIK for parts that can set the physical identification through hardware, > the Intel drivers set the on/off intervals to approximately twice/second; > I don't know what other drivers do in that situation. > > So, I would guess it is not a common requirement to blink at a specific Hz. > I have no problem with changing the hard-coded blink frequency to what our > OEMs expect, but that might be an issue for those other vendors; I was just > trying to make it flexible. Sadly it appears this is necessary. Let's define the return value for drivers wanting periodic callbacks to be the blink frequency in Hz (normally 1 or 2), and get rid of the special case of -EINVAL. This also removes the rather inelegant semantic that drivers may need to change their state despite returning an error code. 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.