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: Sat, 13 Jun 2009 11:29:50 +0200 Message-ID: <4A33718E.9040600@gmail.com> References: <4A334E7A.5020805@gmail.com> <20090613.000729.118500646.davem@davemloft.net> <4A335A8A.5080907@gmail.com> <20090613.010712.100174619.davem@davemloft.net> Reply-To: mfuzzey@gmail.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: bhutchings@solarflare.com, nico@cam.org, netdev@vger.kernel.org To: David Miller Return-path: Received: from ey-out-1920.google.com ([74.125.78.146]:31718 "EHLO ey-out-1920.google.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753682AbZFMJ3v (ORCPT ); Sat, 13 Jun 2009 05:29:51 -0400 Received: by ey-out-1920.google.com with SMTP id 3so297478eyh.26 for ; Sat, 13 Jun 2009 02:29:52 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: <20090613.010712.100174619.davem@davemloft.net> Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: David Miller wrote: > From: Martin Fuzzey > Date: Sat, 13 Jun 2009 09:51:38 +0200 > > The bug is a hardware limitation. > > The kernel programs and knows the hardware. > > Therefore knowledge of the limitation belongs in the kernel. > Yes indeed and that's why I included the programatic interface to let the board specific code in the kernel do it in a non intrusive way with zero driver modifications. For me the command line method is for the "environment" case you mention and the programatic interface is for the broken hardware case. The patch supports both (or just one however you decide to KConfig it) so if you just want to work around broken hardware you don't have to pay the overhead of the command line parsing code. > In no other situation would we say "this aspect of this chip doesn't > work, so we'll block usage of that in some high level configuration > framework" > > No, we'd always deal with HW problems in the driver itself. > Yes I agree but this isn't about the _chip_ being broken but the _board_ being broken. IMHO the drivers are supposed to be chip (or even chip family) specific not board specific. The driver in question is fine and doesn't need fixing - even the board schematic is fine - it's the board layout causing signal corruption at 100MBps... Martin