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From: David Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
Subject: Re: Printing the driver name as part of the netdev watchdog message
Date: Sun, 06 Jul 2008 18:22:43 -0700 (PDT)
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From: Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@vyatta.com>
Date: Sun, 6 Jul 2008 18:08:42 -0700

> For consistency each call through ethtool_ops should
> be holding rtnl mutex. And since dev_watchdog is a timer routine,
> it is not safe to acquire a mutex there.

I think "get driver info", which does nothing but copy strings out of
the driver software state, is a safe exception to these strict locking
rules.

Don't you think? :-)