From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Martin Fuzzey Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH] Ethtool style in kernel network driver configuration. Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2009 08:47:32 +0200 Message-ID: <4A30A884.9000508@gmail.com> References: <20090610173243.17262.91308.stgit@srv002.fuzzey.net> <1244685768.4616.22.camel@deadeye> Reply-To: mfuzzey@gmail.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: netdev@vger.kernel.org, nico@cam.org To: Ben Hutchings Return-path: Received: from mail-ew0-f210.google.com ([209.85.219.210]:39086 "EHLO mail-ew0-f210.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750827AbZFKGrd (ORCPT ); Thu, 11 Jun 2009 02:47:33 -0400 Received: by ewy6 with SMTP id 6so1713026ewy.37 for ; Wed, 10 Jun 2009 23:47:34 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <1244685768.4616.22.camel@deadeye> Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: Ben Hutchings wrote: > Who needs this feature? Why not use ethtool in an initramfs? > > > Forcing speed and duplex is occasionally needed to work around a link > partner that doesn't implement autonegotiation correctly. I don't see > that it should ever be needed in platform configuration. If the driver > doesn't detect the MAC/PHY capabilities correctly then the driver should > be fixed. Overriding the settings once will not prevent an unsupported > mode being selected later. > > To summarize the recent points I made in the smc91x: forcing speed thread : 1) Setting up and maintaining an initramfs can increase the complexity for embedded systems - it's another image file to build, distribute, update to bootloader etc. 2) While I of course agree that broken drivers should be fixed, what about broken hardware? I currently have this situation on one of my boards - 100Mbps doesn't work due to electrical issues (bad routing). This board is already in the wild - if it is fixed one day it will be a new hardware revision and the code will have to cope with both. Sure the "right" way is to fix the hardware but that's not always economically or logistically possible. I suspect such situations are not uncommon in the embedded world. Martin