netdev - Re: [PATCH v2 1/2] r8169: fix RTL8111EVL EEE and green settings

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Message-ID: <4be4ff8c-ab74-419c-43b3-7992e8070f70@gmail.com>
Date:   Sat, 16 Dec 2017 18:11:01 +0100
From:   Heiner Kallweit <hkallweit1@...il.com>
To:     Andrew Lunn <andrew@...n.ch>
Cc:     nic_swsd@...ltek.com, Chun-Hao Lin <hau@...ltek.com>,
        David Miller <davem@...emloft.net>,
        "netdev@...r.kernel.org" <netdev@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 1/2] r8169: fix RTL8111EVL EEE and green settings

Am 21.11.2017 um 02:34 schrieb Andrew Lunn:
> Hi Heiner
> 
> Do you have access to the data sheet?
> 
> I had a quick look through the driver. It would be nice to refactor it
> to follow the usual Linux conventions:
> 
> Turn the MDIO read/write functions into an MDIO bus driver.
> 
> Move the PHY code into drivers/net/phy/realtek.c, and in the process,
> replace all the magic numbers with #defines.
> 
> Do you have any interest in doing this?
> 
>    Andrew
> 
Hi Andrew,

I worked a little on this topic and meanwhile have an experimental
patch set for switching the driver to phylib, incl. MDIO bus driver.
It works well on a RTL8168evl (RTL_GIGA_MAC_VER_34).
Will submit this patch set as RfC in the next days.

Still open is factoring out all phy init stuff to drivers/net/phy.
There are open issues where I would appreciate advice from the
Realtek guys.

The PHY in RTL8168evl identifies as RTL8211E. Question would be
whether such an internal PHY with this id is identical to an
external PHY with the same id.

For most NIC's the driver loads firmware. The firmware can refer
to PHY and MAC as well. In case of RTL8168evl the firmware
(rtl8168e-3.fw) seems to be for the PHY only. So next question
is whether this firmware would be applicable for any RTL8211E
external PHY too.
In this case one option would be to move the firmware handling to
drivers/firmware so that it can be used from PHY drivers and from
NIC drivers as well.

Regards, Heiner