From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Roger Luethi Subject: Re: via_rhine modules error on 2.6.16 with mii-tool Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2006 23:55:58 +0200 Message-ID: <20060413215558.GA3862@k3.hellgate.ch> References: <20060327203946.GA11824@k3.hellgate.ch> <20060413182638.GC25854@tuxdriver.com> <20060413114018.65fba555@localhost.localdomain> <20060413204731.GB2874@k3.hellgate.ch> <20060413140252.1c22b078@localhost.localdomain> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: "John W. Linville" , Marco Berizzi , netdev@vger.kernel.org Return-path: Received: from mail11.bluewin.ch ([195.186.18.61]:14464 "EHLO mail11.bluewin.ch") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S964994AbWDMV45 (ORCPT ); Thu, 13 Apr 2006 17:56:57 -0400 To: Stephen Hemminger Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20060413140252.1c22b078@localhost.localdomain> Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: netdev.vger.kernel.org On Thu, 13 Apr 2006 14:02:52 -0700, Stephen Hemminger wrote: > > I am not keen on patches that make via-rhine more of a special case even if > > it was safe now; next thing you know generic_mii_ioctl is changed in a way > > that breaks the only driver that foolishly made assumptions about the > > side-effects of that function. > > > > If you can safely move the locking down for all network drivers, that would > > be a different story, of course. > > Didn't your mother ever tell you that just because everybody else does > it wrong, you don't have to. No, but she warned me not to spend time on fixing botched low latency patches. Look, it took a lot of time to make via-rhine stable. It's still got unexplained issues. I have a patch here for a bug that makes a driver reload necessary when it occurs (and the patch is sitting here because nobody's able to reproduce the problem anymore). I am lacking adequate documentation, I have little time to work on the driver, but quite a to do list. Does that sound like via-rhine would make a good guinea pig? > The other drivers should be fixed as well. Phy access with irq's disabled > is not good. The hardware I checked takes 100's of usecs to do one read > transaction. If you want to fix this in all drivers, more power to you. It is just not high on my own priority list. I see the need for low latency, but latency issues that only happen when people fiddle with MII settings don't seem all that dramatic to me. Roger