Re: Issue with RTL8111 NIC after upgrade to kernel 4.19

[Heiner Kallweit <hkallweit1@gmail.com>]

On 21.11.2018 21:32, Heiner Kallweit wrote:
> On 21.11.2018 21:20, Andrew Lunn wrote:
>>> request_module() is supposed to be synchronous, however after some
>>> reading this may not be 100% guaranteed. Maybe the module init
>>> function on some systems isn't finished yet when request_module()
>>> returns. As a result the genphy driver may be used instead of
>>> the PHY version-specific driver.
>>
>> Hi Heiner
>>
>> That would be true for all PHYs i think. We would of noticed this
>> problem with other systems using other PHY drivers.
>>
>> 	Andrew
>>
> It could be a timing issue affecting certain systems only. At least
> for now I don't have a good explanation why loading the module via
> request_module() and loading it upfront manually makes a difference.
> 
> One affected user just reported the PHY to be a RTL8211B. This is
> what I expected, because this PHY crashes when writing to the MMD
> registers (the MMD registers are used otherwise by this PHY).
> See also commit 0231b1a074c6 ("net: phy: realtek: Use the dummy
> stubs for MMD register access for rtl8211b").
> 
> Let's see whether the other affected systems use the same PHY
> version.
> 
Next report is also about a RTL8211B and as I assumed:
- W/o manually loading the realtek module the genphy driver is used
  and network fails.
- W/ manually loading the realtek module the proper RTL8211B PHY
  driver is used and network works.

So it seems that even after request_module() the PHY driver isn't
yet available when device and driver are matched.

If further reports support this (pre-)analysis, then indeed it
seems to be a timing issue and a proper fix most likely is
difficult. As a workaround I could imagine to add a delay loop
after request_module() checking for a Realtek PHY driver via
driver_find(). When adding one small delay after this we should
be sufficiently sure that all Realtek PHY drivers are registered.

> Heiner
>