netdev - Re: [PATCH net-next 0/7] Remove three Sun net drivers

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Date:   Fri, 6 Jan 2023 16:25:05 -0700
From:   Karl Volz <karl.volz@...cle.com>
To:     Anirudh Venkataramanan <anirudh.venkataramanan@...el.com>,
        netdev@...r.kernel.org
Cc:     linux-pci@...r.kernel.org, linuxppc-dev@...ts.ozlabs.org,
        linux-mips@...r.kernel.org, linux-trace-kernel@...r.kernel.org,
        sparclinux@...r.kernel.org, Leon Romanovsky <leon@...nel.org>,
        John Paul Adrian Glaubitz <glaubitz@...sik.fu-berlin.de>
Subject: Re: [PATCH net-next 0/7] Remove three Sun net drivers



On 1/6/23 16:10, Anirudh Venkataramanan wrote:
> On 1/6/2023 2:44 PM, Karl Volz wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 1/6/23 15:00, Anirudh Venkataramanan wrote:
>>> This series removes the Sun Cassini, LDOM vswitch and sunvnet drivers.
>>>
>>> In a recent patch series that touched these drivers [1], it was 
>>> suggested
>>> that these drivers should be removed completely. git logs suggest that
>>> there hasn't been any significant feature addition, improvement or 
>>> fixes
>>> to user-visible bugs in a while. A web search didn't indicate any 
>>> recent
>>> discussions or any evidence that there are users out there who care 
>>> about
>>> these drivers.
>>>
>>> The idea behind putting out this series is to either establish that 
>>> these
>>> drivers are used and should be maintained, or remove them.
>> Anirudh,
>>
>> The Sun LDOM vswitch and sunvnet drivers are still in use, please do 
>> not remove them or the event tracing.
>> We use them internally and you don't see any discussions because they 
>> generally work fine (AFAIK).
>
> Hello Karl,
>
> Thanks for chiming in.
>
> Are there recent platforms where these drivers are used? If yes, do 
> you know which ones? Or are these drivers useful in old/legacy 
> platforms that are still around but perhaps no longer in production?

These drivers work on older T4, T5, etc  to the latest T7, T8 Sun 
servers (e.g. T8-2, T8-4, note, T7/T8 are still in production).
They may also work on T2/T3  (but I don't use those anymore, though 
Adrian (John Paul Adrian Glaubitz <glaubitz@...sik.fu-berlin.de>) might).
You might have missed a lot of the linux SPARC developers since they are 
on the debian-sparc@...ts.debian.org list, hence I'd ask there also.
>
>> I think you are also going to break things by removing Sun Cassini 
>> support, but I am not using it personally.
>
> You suspect there are users for this driver as well?

Yes, they may not have seen this yet or recognized the servers this card 
goes in (post on debian-sparc@...ts.debian.org list).

>
>> What user visible bugs are you referring to here?
>
> I was saying I don't see any evidence of recent bug fixes, which would 
> make sense if these drivers "just work".

ok, no worries.

Cheers
Karl

>
> Ani