Re: e1000e NVM corruption issue status

[Tim Gardner]

This is a multi-part message in MIME format.Brandeburg, Jesse wrote:
> On Fri, 26 Sep 2008, Tim Gardner wrote:
>>> Ok here's an updated one.  Jesse (Br) can you add it to your list?  If the X 
>>> driver really is mapping too much this should catch it, as long as it goes 
>>> through sysfs.
> 
> I have, am testing with it now.
> 
>> I've been experimenting with unmapping flash space until its actually
>> needed, e.g., in the functions that use the E1000_READ_FLASH and
>> E1000_WRITE_FLASH macros. Along the way I looked at how flash write
> 
> That sounds like a good patch set.  I had thought of trying that but 
> hadn't gotten to it yet, so if you have something to look at in diff 
> format just post it and we'll take a look.
> 
>> cycles are initiated because I was having a hard time believing that
>> having flash space mapped was part of the root cause. However, it looks
>> like its pretty simple to initiate a write or erase cycle. All of the
>> required action bits in ICH_FLASH_HSFSTS and ICH_FLASH_HSFCTL must be 1,
>> and these 2 register are in the correct order if X was writing 0xff in
>> ascending order.
> 
> Seems simple but when I tried it for a couple of hours yesterday I 
> couldn't get anything to happen to my flash.  This included putting 
> ew16flash writes in the e1000e driver, and writing those magic bits.

Jesse,

Here is a patch against 2.6.27-rc7 that maps flash space on demand.
I've only compile tested it, but a similar patch that applies against
the Ubuntu Intrepid tree is at

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/kernel-team/2008-September/003193.html

Note that this 2nd, actually tested patch is against the e1000e
driver v0.4.7.1 that originated from sourceforge.

rtg
-- 
Tim Gardner tim.gardner@xxxxxxxxxxxxx