netdev - Re: [BUG] tg3 cannot do PXE (loses MAC address) after soft reboot

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Date:	Fri, 14 Sep 2007 10:14:20 +0200
From:	Ingo Oeser <netdev@...eo.de>
To:	"Michael Chan" <mchan@...adcom.com>
Cc:	"Lucas Nussbaum" <lucas.nussbaum@...g.fr>,
	"netdev" <netdev@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [BUG] tg3 cannot do PXE (loses MAC address) after soft reboot

Michael Chan schrieb:
> On Thu, 2007-09-13 at 21:28 +0200, Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
> > Erm, Wouldn't it be possible to print a warning when the driver loads,
> > saying that the firmware is outdated ?
> 
> It's possible, but would require the driver to parse the version string.
> The driver currently reports the version string for information and for
> the human to parse it.

Yes, but most humans don't know all valid firmware versions of their 
components.

Is it enough to parse the first number in the firmware via simple_strtoul()?

Then we could do this (pseudo-kernel-code :-)):


firmare_version = simple_strtoul(version_string, NULL, 0);

if (firmware_version < oldest_supported) {
	printk(KERN_WARNING "Please upgrade the firmware (you have %s, we need at least %d)\n", 
		version_string, oldest_supported);
} else if (firmware_version > newest_supported) {
	printk(KERN_INFO "Firmware version %s (latest supported: %d). You might need a newer driver.\n", 
		version_string, oldest_supported);
} else if (firmware_version != newest_supported) {
	dprintk("Firmware version %s (latest supported: %d). You might consider a firmware upgrade.\n", 
		version_string, oldest_supported);
}

Maybe that mechanism should be global somewhere? Having this kind of information available
would help system maintenance in heterogenous hardware environments.

Best regards

Ingo Oeser
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