* Alexander Reichle-Schmehl [2012-03-05 12:41 +0100]: > > Am 04.03.2012 18:45, schrieb Carsten Hey: > > >> There are also a lot of network interfaces that don't have MDIO-managed > >> PHYs, and then there are 10G PHYs with a different register set (see > >> IEEE 802.3 clause 45). This is why Linux provides the ethtool API to > >> get PHY state with a little more abstraction. > >> > >> I suggest that you refer to ethtool as the preferred tool for modern > >> network drivers, but leave mii-diag around for old drivers that don't > >> support the ethtool API. I don't see any need to remove it as it should > >> still work for that old hardware. > > Ben's arguments and his suggestion are plausible. Alex, please consider > > running "bts severity 301239 important" :) > > Hmmm... Considering what Ben said (I didn't knew there are network > cards not supportied by ethtool, and maintained the package mostly for > the lazy like me, who don't want to learn a new thing),
I wasn't aware of this too. This seems to be the missing argument that lead to our, from my current point of view, wrong agreement about mii-diag being not in a releasable state. > I'd like to propose the following solution: > > What about adding a hint to README.Debian and the package description, > pointing out, that it is a legacy package for older network cards, > pointing to ethtool for newer hardware, and adding a suggest:ethtool > to the package. When elvm broke my system by just installing it to be able to read the included documentation, I looked if there is a README.Debian explaining why it did so, but in general I do not read the README.Debian of random tools I use - so I'm not convinced that this reaches many users. But additionally to mentioning it in the package description (which is a great idea and IMHO justifies the additional work of the translation teams to update the package description's translations), adding a note to README.Debian seems to be sane. The main argument for adding this to the package description is that users should be aware of this issue before they install the package, but to be able to read README.Debian they need to install the package first. You could also add a short note "See /usr/share/doc/mii-diag/README.Debian for an explanation why mii-diag does not correctly detect Gigabit Ethernet or better." to the man page. Obviously just adding documentation does not fix the bug (completely) and after being aware of the things Ben explained, we seem to agree that this bug is not release critical. Maybe you, as maintainer, could adapt the severity? Carsten -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
