From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@pobox.com>
Subject: Re: [RFC] let mortals use ethtool
Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2006 16:35:48 -0400
Message-ID: <451C3224.8030903@pobox.com>
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Cc: Michael Chan <mchan@broadcom.com>,
	Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@osdl.org>, netdev@vger.kernel.org
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To: James Morris <jmorris@namei.org>
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James Morris wrote:
> On Thu, 28 Sep 2006, Michael Chan wrote:
> 
>> I'm against letting normal users do ETHTOOL_GREGS and ETHTOOL_PHYS_ID.
>> Dumping 64K worth of registers and blinking the LEDs should be
>> restricted.
> 
> Out of curiosity -- why?

In the past, dumping certain tg3 registers has led to lock-ups, for one.

Also, blindly dumping registers can negatively affect driver operation, 
for the case where reading registers has side effects, such as PHY 
register bit shifting, or read-and-clear registers.

	Jeff