Darren Reed wrote:
Garrett D'Amore wrote:
...
Now, all that said, there remain legitimate needs for enumerated
tunables. If I were to build a brussels version of the elxl driver,
for example, I'd like a tunable that let me select between MII, 10
Base-T, 10 Base-2, and AUI. This particular pattern I've seen before
though, and it may be common enough that it should be a standard
property.
In this particular case, I think there is a read side behaviour (which
physical
interface is active) and a write-site (select the physical connection)
that are
related but independant. I'm pretty sure that I've used NICs (SBUS?) that
had 2 or three of the above and did not require any manual selection. The
read-side behaviour is something that could be generic...
Some of the NICs I've seen probe periodically to determine which port is
active. Its kind of a hack, compared to the MII way of doing things.
But the NICs that need manual selection that I've seen are actually
newer, and select between 100 Base -TX copper and 100Base-FX fiber. A
few drivers use an ugly hack to pseudo-detect this, by looking for a
link on the fiber at attach time, and then if one isn't found defaulting
to 100 Base-TX. But there are problems with this.
Again, this pattern may warrant a common property. But a reasonable
driver tunable would work too. I just don't think such a tunable ought
to be hard to find.
-- Garrett
Darren
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