From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Ben Hutchings Subject: Re: [RFC] Running single tests via ethtool Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2008 15:13:50 +0100 Message-ID: <20080604141349.GA11300@solarflare.com> References: <20080530220819.GJ1743@solarflare.com> <48443207.5090009@garzik.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Cc: netdev@vger.kernel.org, linux-net-drivers@solarflare.com To: Jeff Garzik Return-path: Received: from 82-69-137-158.dsl.in-addr.zen.co.uk ([82.69.137.158]:45797 "EHLO uklogin.uk.level5networks.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-FAIL) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1757963AbYFDOOB (ORCPT ); Wed, 4 Jun 2008 10:14:01 -0400 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <48443207.5090009@garzik.org> Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: Jeff Garzik wrote: [...] > Well it really becomes of question of whether or not you want to be > importing a huge test suite into a kernel driver. The ethtool stuff was > not meant to cover exhaustive tests, just a way to run "it works" > self-checks and diagnostics. We're not intending to expand the tests massively, though there are a few that should be added. We just want to pick which to run. I'm not entirely clear why the customer wants this, but I can imagine wanting to run a single test repeatedly if some aspect of a board is suspected to be intermittently faulty. Since there is no firmware in our current controller, the initialisation is fairly complex and we wouldn't want to duplicate it outside the driver in a standalone diagnostic program. Besides which, unloading a driver and keeping it unloaded seems to be increasingly tricky. Ben. -- Ben Hutchings, Senior Software Engineer, Solarflare Communications Not speaking for my employer; that's the marketing department's job.