linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] net: add ability to clear stats via ethtool

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Message-ID: <20080529154525.3916c7b5@core>
Date:	Thu, 29 May 2008 15:45:25 +0100
From:	Alan Cox <alan@...rguk.ukuu.org.uk>
To:	James Cammarata <jimi@...x.net>
Cc:	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
	Linux Netdev List <netdev@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] net: add ability to clear stats via ethtool -
 e1000/pcnet32

> > Many of the kernel's accounting accumulators cannot be reset.  We
> > handle that in userspace tools by using subtraction.
> 
> I don't think that should preclude the ability to reset these, unless it is
> shown that it would break something very badly.

For one quite a few of the network cards keep the stats in hardware and
don't neccessarily have a way to reset them. In other cases there is a
mix of OS accumulated stats bulk updated by overflow events on the device
itself.

Its a lot of complexity, and changes all over the places for the sake of
a trivial userspace change. I would suggest you instead write a quick bit
of perl or python that fetches the stats and then updates every second
with the changes.

Alan
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