netdev - Re: Manual loading of mlx4

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Message-ID: <20140729123405.6802fbc4@endymion.delvare>
Date:	Tue, 29 Jul 2014 12:34:05 +0200
From:	Jean Delvare <jdelvare@...e.de>
To:	Amir Vadai <amirv@...lanox.com>
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

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?)

-- 
Jean Delvare
SUSE L3 Support
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