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Message-ID: <45621FEB.204@garzik.org>
Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2006 16:36:43 -0500
From: Jeff Garzik <jeff@...zik.org>
To: Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@...l.org>
CC: Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>, Chris Snook <csnook@...hat.com>,
Jay Cliburn <jacliburn@...lsouth.net>, romieu@...zoreil.com,
netdev@...r.kernel.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH 3/4] atl1: Main C file for Attansic L1 driver
Stephen Hemminger wrote:
> On Mon, 20 Nov 2006 14:35:10 -0500
> Jeff Garzik <jeff@...zik.org> wrote:
>
>> Stephen Hemminger wrote:
>>> Using common MII code is good, but one problem with the existing MII code is that
>>> it doesn't work when device is down. This makes it impossible to set speed/duplex
>>> before device comes up.
>>
>> That's not true at all. drivers/net/mii.c uses caller-provided locking
>> in all cases, and there is nothing that prevents the common code from
>> being called when the interface is down.
>>
>> You are probably thinking about all the netif_running() checks found in
>> the drivers, particularly in the ->begin() hook.
>>
>> Jeff
>>
>>
>
> Yeah it is a driver specific thing. All users of mii seem to block changes so
> I thought it was in base code.
Yeah. As a bit of history, a lot of drivers would power down the phy
when the interface was down, and so MII would need to be inaccessible.
But that's really a driver policy thing. If the driver provides a
"don't power down phy, when interface is downed" knob, maybe it would
want to support MII operations when !netif_running().
Jeff
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