On 12 May 2016 at 01:58, David Miller <da...@davemloft.net> wrote:
> From: Ard Biesheuvel <ard.biesheu...@linaro.org>
> Date: Wed, 11 May 2016 09:47:49 +0200
>
>> The current logic around the 'use_dac' module parameter prevents the
>> r81969 driver from being loadable on 64-bit systems without any RAM
>> below 4 GB when the parameter is left at its default value.
>> So introduce a new default value -1 which indicates that 64-bit DMA
>> should be enabled implicitly, but only if setting a 32-bit DMA mask
>> has failed earlier. This should prevent any regressions like the ones
>> caused by previous attempts to change this code.
>>
>> Cc: Realtek linux nic maintainers <nic_s...@realtek.com>
>> Signed-off-by: Ard Biesheuvel <ard.biesheu...@linaro.org>
>
> I think we should just seriously consider changing the default, it's
> a really outdated reasoning behind the current default setting. Maybe
> relevant a decade ago, but probably not now.
>
> And if the card is completely disfunctional in said configuration, the
> default is definitely wrong.
The card is indeed completely disfunctional. So we could try to
resurrect 353176888386 ("r8169: enable 64-bit DMA by default for PCI
Express devices"), and instead of backing it out again if regressions
are reported, blacklist the particular chips. This is a much better
approach, since then we can also print some kind of diagnostic on
those arm64 systems why such a blacklisted NIC is not supported.
