netdev - Re: Manual loading of mlx4

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Date:	Tue, 29 Jul 2014 13:44:54 +0300
From:	Amir Vadai <amirv@...lanox.com>
To:	Jean Delvare <jdelvare@...e.de>
CC:	Or Gerlitz <ogerlitz@...lanox.com>,
	Jack Morgenstein <jackm@....mellanox.co.il>,
	"David S. Miller" <davem@...emloft.net>,
	netdev <netdev@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: Manual loading of mlx4_en

On 7/29/2014 1:34 PM, Jean Delvare wrote:
> Hi Amir,
> 
> On Tue, 29 Jul 2014 13:16:42 +0300, Amir Vadai wrote:
>> On 7/29/2014 12:53 PM, Jean Delvare wrote:
>>> I have a usability concern with the mlx4_en ethernet network driver. The
>>> module aliases for all the supported devices are on the mlx4_core
>>> module, so mlx4_core gets loaded automatically, but mlx4_en does not. I
>>> must load mlx4_en manually (kernel 3.12.)
>>>
>>> May I ask why the mlx4 driver was split into mlx4_core and mlx4_en in
>>> the first place?
>> Connect-X card can support both Ethernet and Infiniband link layer - you
>> can switch between link layers without replacing the hardware.
>>
>> To prevent code duplication, there is a single lower layer driver -
>> mlx4_core and two separate upper layer drivers - mlx4_en and mlx4_ib.
>>
>> Since kernel 3.13 mlx4_core is loading automatically the upper layer
>> driver using request_module():
>> b046ffe net/mlx4_core: Load higher level modules according to ports type
> 
> Many thanks for the fast and detailed answer! I'll go backport this
> commit to kernel 3.12 (and 3.0, hopefully it doesn't have too many
> dependencies?)
> 

I don't think there is any dependency for that commit. If you're
backporting it, also take a small fix to it:
f24f790 net/mlx4_core: Load the Eth driver first

Amir
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