On Mon, Sep 28, 2020 at 02:31:55PM -0700, Jakub Kicinski wrote: > On Sat, 26 Sep 2020 23:06:26 +0200 Andrew Lunn wrote: > > Not all ports of a switch need to be used, particularly in embedded > > systems. Add a port flavour for ports which physically exist in the > > switch, but are not connected to the front panel etc, and so are > > unused. > > This is missing the explanation of why reporting such ports makes sense.
Because this is a core devlink patch, we're talking really generalistic here. And since devlink regions are a debugging features, it makes sense to tell a debugging story. Let's say there is a switch which had configured all its ports to be part of the flooding replication lists, but also configured other things incorrectly such that attempting to flood a frame to a disabled port would leak a memory buffer. After enough time, the system would lock up. So unused ports are not absent from the system and they might even make a difference if the procedure to disable a port is buggy (and there would be no debugging without bugs, right?). I see no reason why we would hide them. Devlink ports are not net devices, I thought that was the whole point, to have insight into the hardware and not have to deal with an approximate abstraction.
