Re: [PATCH net-next] net: x25_asy: Delete the x25_asy driver

From: Arnd Bergmann
Date: Thu Nov 05 2020 - 15:41:00 EST


On Thu, Nov 5, 2020 at 9:06 PM Xie He <xie.he.0141@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Nov 5, 2020 at 7:07 AM Arnd Bergmann <arnd@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > Adding Martin Schiller and Andrew Hendry, plus the linux-x25 mailing
> > list to Cc.
>
> The linux-x25 mail list has stopped working for a long time.
>
> > When I last looked at the wan drivers, I think I concluded
> > that this should still be kept around, but I do not remember why.
>
> I think we only decided that X.25 as a whole was still needed. We
> didn't decide that this particular driver was necessary.

Right, I agree that would be the most likely case given the
state of the driver.

> > Since you did the bugfix mentioned above, do you have an idea
> > when it could have last worked? I see it was originally merged in
> > linux-2.3.21, and Stephen Hemminger did a cleanup for
> > linux-2.6.0-rc3 that he apparently tested but also said "Not sure
> > if anyone ever uses this.".
>
> I think this driver never worked. Looking at the original code in
> Linux 2.1.31, it already has the problems I fixed in commit
> 8fdcabeac398.
>
> I guess when people (or bots) say they "tested", they have not
> necessarily used this driver to actually try transporting data. They
> may just have tested open/close, etc. to confirm that the particular
> problem/issue they saw had been fixed.

It didn't sound like that from the commit message, but it could be.
For reference:
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tglx/history.git/commit?id=aa2b4427c355acaf86d2c7e6faea3472005e3cff

Arnd