On Sun, 2016-06-05 at 10:16 +0000, Yuval Mintz wrote:
> >
> > Currently ethtool implementation does not have a way to pass the metadata
> > for
> > eeprom related operations. Some adapters have a complicated non-volatile
> > memory implementation that requires additional information – there are
> > drivers
> > [bnx2x and bnxt] that use the ‘magic’ field in the {G,S}EEPROM for that
> > purpose,
> > although that’s not its intended usage.
> >
> > This patch adds a provision to pass the eeprom metadata for
> > %ETHTOOL_SEEPROM/%ETHTOOL_GEEPROM implementations. User provided
> > metadata will be cached by the driver and assigns a magic value which the
> > application need to use for the subsequent {G,S}EEPROM command.
>
> Hi Dave,
>
> This got no comments at all.
> What do you want us to with it next? Should we re-send it as a patch?Here's a comment: I really dislike this. - It doesn't specify any semantics for the 'metadata'. The comment hints that they are driver-specific identifiers for different NVRAM partitions. - It doesn't provide a way for userland to enumerate the valid metadata values. - It's not clear whether the driver is supposed to maintain just one metadata:magic mapping, or more than that. Is the ethtool API really the right interface for access to flash? The sfc driver exposes a large number of flash partitions using MTD instead. These can be enumerated (through /proc/mtd or sysfs) and they can be read and written through block devices. Ben. -- Ben Hutchings Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. - Albert Einstein
signature.asc
Description: This is a digitally signed message part
