Re: ata and netdev (was Re: -mm merge plans for 2.6.23)

From: Dan Faerch
Date: Wed Jul 11 2007 - 13:07:30 EST


Andrew Morton wrote:
drivers-net-ns83820c-add-paramter-to-disable-auto.patch:

See comments in changelog: ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm/patches/2.6/2.6.22-rc6/2.6.22-rc6-mm1/broken-out/drivers-net-ns83820c-add-paramter-to-disable-auto.patch

Dan, Ben: is there any prospect of progress here?
Mmm.. Ben had 2 comments last year:

In regards to the ethtool stuff i coded:

This part is good, although doing something for copper cards needs doing,

I know very little about hardware and only own the fiber version of this card. Even if i tried to make code for the copper version, it would probably blow it up the phy and set the switches on fire ;).

And in regards to the '"disable_autoneg" module argument':

This is the part I disagree with. Are you sure it isn't a bug in the link autonegotiation state machine for fibre cards? It should be defaulting to 1Gbit/full duplex if no autonegotiation is happening, and if it isn't then that should be fixed instead of papering over things with a config option.

This is pretty much Russian to me. I wouldnt know where to find the "link-autonegotiation-state-machine-for-fibre-cards" or know what to do with it anyway :).

The "disable_autoneg" is a convenient feature (for me and the other guy who made the same patch last year) and i consider it a harmless feature in every way.
It is simply an 'if'-statement, that skips the "start autoneg" function upon load.
We can simply remove the feature entirely if it is deemed undesirable.



So in conclusion:
- I vote "use the patch as-is", but im fine with it being changed. - If it needs support for copper, someone else has to code it.


Regards
- Dan

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