Re: tulip driver in 2.1.11* - 2.1.21 is broken - new driver

Alan Cox (alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk)
Fri, 18 Sep 1998 20:25:34 +0100 (BST)


> dev->tbusy has always been a bug, with no redeeming features. It's really
> only a way to say "yes, I have a bug, and I want to know about it" instead
> of fixing the problem properly.

No dev->tbusy is nothing to do with the locking, and you cannot really make
it a spinlock. dev->tbusy is simply a flag saying "Do not stuff any more
packets at me". Unfortunately its also involved with some timer recovery
magic that Don has put the hooks into later drivers to fix

Basically the rule currently is

On a first transmit call the card even if dev->tbusy is set. On
further retransmits do not do so. This is because the hard_start_xmit
routine currently does timeouts (which is broken and one day needs
to move up a layer).

Whether dev->interrupt should be spinlocks is another question altogether.

Alan

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