Re: [2.6 patch] the overdue eepro100 removal

2007-07-09 Thread Bill Davidsen
Please do not make unnecessary kernel changes which require changes in 
our systems.


Kok, Auke wrote:

Bill Davidsen wrote:

Adrian Bunk wrote:

This patch contains the overdue removal of the eepro100 driver.

Signed-off-by: Adrian Bunk [EMAIL PROTECTED]

The hardware supported by this driver is still in use, thanks. It's 
probably easier to leave the eepro100 driver in than find anyone who 
wants to investigate why the other driver (e100? from memory) doesn't 
work with some cards. As I recall this was suggested over a year ago 
and it was decided to leave it in, all of the reasons for doing so 
still seem valid. There really doesn't seem to be a benefit, it's not 
like people are working night and day to support new cards for this 
chip.




please see the thread Re: [PATCH] fix e100 rx path on ARM (was 
[PATCH] e100 rx: or s and el bits) which is discussing a fix for this 
issue and currently being worked.


eepro100 will *still* be removed once e100 is fixed to support those 
devices.


Frankly I think there are more of us running old cards on PC hardware 
than people running ARM! And for a number of card for old buses like 
ISA, EISA, and VESA, the e100 has not worked. These are old PCs 
converted to routers and firewalls, and for security should not be left 
without upgrades.
Moreover, we now also have a fix for the e100 IPMI issues on some tyan 
boards (patch coming this week!). That hopefully solves all e100 
issues that are still open.




If you think the e100 driver fixes your problems use it and be happy. 
But since you don't have to test system behavior with the new driver, 
and you won't be called at night or on weekends if it doesn't work, do 
the rest of the world a favor and stop taking out things we know to 
work! Leaving in the eepro100 causes no work for you, and even if e100 
works perfectly it needs to be validated in any sane network. it still 
makes work.


--
bill davidsen [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 CTO TMR Associates, Inc
 Doing interesting things with small computers since 1979

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Re: [2.6 patch] the overdue eepro100 removal

2007-07-09 Thread Adrian Bunk
On Thu, Jul 05, 2007 at 12:01:56PM -0400, Bill Davidsen wrote:
 Please do not make unnecessary kernel changes which require changes in our 
 systems.

Welcome to the kernel 2.6 development model.

 Kok, Auke wrote:
 Bill Davidsen wrote:
 Adrian Bunk wrote:
 This patch contains the overdue removal of the eepro100 driver.

 Signed-off-by: Adrian Bunk [EMAIL PROTECTED]

 The hardware supported by this driver is still in use, thanks. It's 
 probably easier to leave the eepro100 driver in than find anyone who 
 wants to investigate why the other driver (e100? from memory) doesn't 
 work with some cards. As I recall this was suggested over a year ago and 
 it was decided to leave it in, all of the reasons for doing so still seem 
 valid. There really doesn't seem to be a benefit, it's not like people 
 are working night and day to support new cards for this chip.


 please see the thread Re: [PATCH] fix e100 rx path on ARM (was [PATCH] 
 e100 rx: or s and el bits) which is discussing a fix for this issue and 
 currently being worked.

 eepro100 will *still* be removed once e100 is fixed to support those 
 devices.

 Frankly I think there are more of us running old cards on PC hardware than 
 people running ARM! And for a number of card for old buses like ISA, EISA, 
 and VESA, the e100 has not worked. These are old PCs converted to routers 
 and firewalls, and for security should not be left without upgrades.

WTF are you talking about?

Both drivers only support PCI cards.

 Moreover, we now also have a fix for the e100 IPMI issues on some tyan 
 boards (patch coming this week!). That hopefully solves all e100 issues 
 that are still open.

 If you think the e100 driver fixes your problems use it and be happy. But 
 since you don't have to test system behavior with the new driver, and you 
 won't be called at night or on weekends if it doesn't work, do the rest of 
 the world a favor and stop taking out things we know to work! Leaving in 
 the eepro100 causes no work for you, and even if e100 works perfectly it 
 needs to be validated in any sane network. it still makes work.

The goal is to get e100 better, and removing eepro100 helps with 
reaching this goal.

Why didn't _you_ try the e100 driver when you validated your systems 
after you upgraded them to kernel 2.6, and if you did and it didn't 
work, where is your bug report?

cu
Adrian

-- 

   Is there not promise of rain? Ling Tan asked suddenly out
of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
   Only a promise, Lao Er said.
   Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed

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Re: [2.6 patch] the overdue eepro100 removal

2007-07-09 Thread Bill Davidsen

Adrian Bunk wrote:

On Thu, Jul 05, 2007 at 12:01:56PM -0400, Bill Davidsen wrote:
  
Please do not make unnecessary kernel changes which require changes in our 
systems.



If you think the e100 driver fixes your problems use it and be happy. But 
since you don't have to test system behavior with the new driver, and you 
won't be called at night or on weekends if it doesn't work, do the rest of 
the world a favor and stop taking out things we know to work! Leaving in 
the eepro100 causes no work for you, and even if e100 works perfectly it 
needs to be validated in any sane network. it still makes work.



The goal is to get e100 better, and removing eepro100 helps with 
reaching this goal.


  
That's *your* goal, it should not be a shock that users have a goal of 
using their systems without having to reconfigure them every time 
there's a kernel upgrade containing a security fix.
Why didn't _you_ try the e100 driver when you validated your systems 
after you upgraded them to kernel 2.6, and if you did and it didn't 
work, where is your bug report?
  
Is that a joke, or subtle irony? Do you generally validate drivers you 
don't use just because your hardware might be able to support them? I 
don't validate various accelerated video drivers on systems running 
mostly text console, never check sound options on systems with an audio 
application, etc. After I tried the e100 driver on the first few systems 
and found issues (which may be resolved by now) I went back to eepro100 
and used what worked. And used the driver for any new systems in other 
installs.


If there were any benefit to removing a working driver I would at least 
be able to see it as a resources issue, but as far as I can see you just 
seem to have a personal preference for the e100 driver and want to force 
others to use it because you are so much better able to decide what 
users need than the system administrators. That's one of the reasons 
people choose open source, because they have a choice, and can use 
what's best for them.


--
bill davidsen [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 CTO TMR Associates, Inc
 Doing interesting things with small computers since 1979

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Re: [2.6 patch] the overdue eepro100 removal

2007-07-09 Thread Kok, Auke

Bill Davidsen wrote:

Adrian Bunk wrote:

On Thu, Jul 05, 2007 at 12:01:56PM -0400, Bill Davidsen wrote:
  
Please do not make unnecessary kernel changes which require changes in our 
systems.


If you think the e100 driver fixes your problems use it and be happy. But 
since you don't have to test system behavior with the new driver, and you 
won't be called at night or on weekends if it doesn't work, do the rest of 
the world a favor and stop taking out things we know to work! Leaving in 
the eepro100 causes no work for you, and even if e100 works perfectly it 
needs to be validated in any sane network. it still makes work.

The goal is to get e100 better, and removing eepro100 helps with 
reaching this goal.
  
That's *your* goal, it should not be a shock that users have a goal of 
using their systems without having to reconfigure them every time 
there's a kernel upgrade containing a security fix.


unfortunately it is impossible for anyone to patch *every* old version of an OS 
there is. Not only do we not want to do this (too much work, little return), but 
most of the times it is exponentially more difficult to fix a security bug in an 
older OS version than a new one.


Why didn't _you_ try the e100 driver when you validated your systems 
after you upgraded them to kernel 2.6, and if you did and it didn't 
work, where is your bug report?
  
Is that a joke, or subtle irony? Do you generally validate drivers you 
don't use just because your hardware might be able to support them? I 
don't validate various accelerated video drivers on systems running 
mostly text console, never check sound options on systems with an audio 
application, etc. After I tried the e100 driver on the first few systems 
and found issues (which may be resolved by now) I went back to eepro100 
and used what worked. And used the driver for any new systems in other 
installs.


If there were any benefit to removing a working driver I would at least 
be able to see it as a resources issue, but as far as I can see you just 
seem to have a personal preference for the e100 driver and want to force 
others to use it because you are so much better able to decide what 
users need than the system administrators. That's one of the reasons 
people choose open source, because they have a choice, and can use 
what's best for them.


as discussed before we really want to avoid having (1) an unmaintained 
bitrotting driver for X and (2) one that should work because people are being 
paid to take care of it.


The community has always encouraged us to work with us fixing the last issues in 
e100 to make it work for everyone. After all, we have all the documentation and 
facilities here to do almost all of the work.


I asked Adrian to postpone removing the eepro100 driver since we know that e100 
is still not working on some platforms. However, if e100 is not working on your 
specific platform, then I would certainly like to know about your problem, and 
whether it still exists. This is orthogonal to your argument: Your complaint 
stands (and eepro100 will not be removed until we address the ARM platform 
issues), but I ask you kindly to work with us and test the current e100 driver 
and report any issues to us.


Cheers,

Auke
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Re: [2.6 patch] the overdue eepro100 removal

2007-07-09 Thread Adrian Bunk
On Mon, Jul 09, 2007 at 01:27:55PM -0400, Bill Davidsen wrote:
 Adrian Bunk wrote:
 On Thu, Jul 05, 2007 at 12:01:56PM -0400, Bill Davidsen wrote:
   
 Please do not make unnecessary kernel changes which require changes in 
 our systems.
 

 If you think the e100 driver fixes your problems use it and be happy. But 
 since you don't have to test system behavior with the new driver, and you 
 won't be called at night or on weekends if it doesn't work, do the rest 
 of the world a favor and stop taking out things we know to work! Leaving 
 in the eepro100 causes no work for you, and even if e100 works perfectly 
 it needs to be validated in any sane network. it still makes work.
 

 The goal is to get e100 better, and removing eepro100 helps with reaching 
 this goal.

   
 That's *your* goal, it should not be a shock that users have a goal of 
 using their systems without having to reconfigure them every time there's a 
 kernel upgrade containing a security fix.

For how many years do you know that there's a new and actively 
maintained e100 driver for your hardware?

And if you don't follow a stable line like the 2.6.16 kernel or a 
distribution kernel it's simply a part of the current development model 
that some kernel parts change. If changing one driver results in a big 
problem in your setup you should reconsider your setup. And every new 
kernel except for -stable kernels will anyway require a revalidation, so 
changing the network driver as part of this shouldn't be a big issue.

 Why didn't _you_ try the e100 driver when you validated your systems after 
 you upgraded them to kernel 2.6, and if you did and it didn't work, where 
 is your bug report?
   
 Is that a joke, or subtle irony? Do you generally validate drivers you 
 don't use just because your hardware might be able to support them? I don't 
 validate various accelerated video drivers on systems running mostly text 
 console, never check sound options on systems with an audio application, 
 etc. After I tried the e100 driver on the first few systems and found 
 issues (which may be resolved by now) I went back to eepro100 and used what 
 worked. And used the driver for any new systems in other installs.

And exactly this is the reason why the eepro100 driver has to be 
removed, and that this will result in a better hardware support for 
everyone in the long term.

 If there were any benefit to removing a working driver I would at least be 
 able to see it as a resources issue, but as far as I can see you just seem 
 to have a personal preference for the e100 driver and want to force others 
 to use it because you are so much better able to decide what users need 
 than the system administrators. That's one of the reasons people choose 
 open source, because they have a choice, and can use what's best for them.

I don't have a personal preference for the e100 driver (although it's 
working fine in my computer), but I have a preference for the benefits 
of having only one driver for a given hardware over having two drivers.

People like you use the eepro100 driver instead of reporting the bugs in 
the e100 driver you ran into.

This is exactly the problem with two different drivers having different 
hardware support, different features and different bugs we should avoid.

One driver supporting all hardware, having all features and all bug 
fixes is a huge benefit.

In your prevous email you were whining And for a number of card for old 
buses like ISA, EISA, and VESA, the e100 has not worked. although 
eepro100 didn't support such cards.

Now you claim to speak for the system administrators.

Please bring some technical points, preferably bug reports for problems 
with e100 that don't exist with eepro100.

cu
Adrian

-- 

   Is there not promise of rain? Ling Tan asked suddenly out
of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
   Only a promise, Lao Er said.
   Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed

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Re: [2.6 patch] the overdue eepro100 removal

2007-07-09 Thread Jeff Garzik

Kok, Auke wrote:
as discussed before we really want to avoid having (1) an unmaintained 
bitrotting driver for X and (2) one that should work because people are 
being paid to take care of it.


The community has always encouraged us to work with us fixing the last 
issues in e100 to make it work for everyone. After all, we have all the 
documentation and facilities here to do almost all of the work.



Agreed on all points.

Jeff


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Re: [2.6 patch] the overdue eepro100 removal

2007-07-09 Thread Bill Davidsen

Adrian Bunk wrote:

On Mon, Jul 09, 2007 at 01:27:55PM -0400, Bill Davidsen wrote:


For how many years do you know that there's a new and actively 
maintained e100 driver for your hardware?


And if you don't follow a stable line like the 2.6.16 kernel or a 
distribution kernel it's simply a part of the current development model 
that some kernel parts change. If changing one driver results in a big 
problem in your setup you should reconsider your setup. And every new 
kernel except for -stable kernels will anyway require a revalidation, so 
changing the network driver as part of this shouldn't be a big issue.


Nothing is a big issue if you can force someone else to do the work. 
And if you have no impact from a production outage if some new driver 
works for hours and then does something unexpected.


Why didn't _you_ try the e100 driver when you validated your systems after 
you upgraded them to kernel 2.6, and if you did and it didn't work, where 
is your bug report?
  
Is that a joke, or subtle irony? Do you generally validate drivers you 
don't use just because your hardware might be able to support them? I don't 
validate various accelerated video drivers on systems running mostly text 
console, never check sound options on systems with an audio application, 
etc. After I tried the e100 driver on the first few systems and found 
issues (which may be resolved by now) I went back to eepro100 and used what 
worked. And used the driver for any new systems in other installs.


And exactly this is the reason why the eepro100 driver has to be 
removed, and that this will result in a better hardware support for 
everyone in the long term.




If this was a case of a kernel change requiring an effort to keep the 
driver I would not be suggesting someone take time to update the driver 
from threads to tasklets or fartlets or whatever the next ultimate irq 
handling happens to be. But when there's zero effort at the moment to 
retain the driver, I think it's change for the sake of change.


--
Bill Davidsen [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked.  - from Slashdot
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Re: [2.6 patch] the overdue eepro100 removal

2007-07-09 Thread Ian McDonald

On 7/10/07, Bill Davidsen [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

If there were any benefit to removing a working driver I would at least
be able to see it as a resources issue, but as far as I can see you just
seem to have a personal preference for the e100 driver and want to force
others to use it because you are so much better able to decide what
users need than the system administrators. That's one of the reasons
people choose open source, because they have a choice, and can use
what's best for them.


And be thankful it is open source. If Microsoft drops a driver in
Vista you don't have a choice. If Linux drops a driver you can go and
patch it back in if you feel that passionate about it.

Unfortunately things change in life but at least you have the choice
of being stuck with the old bit-rotting driver if you really want to.

Ian
--
Web: http://wand.net.nz/~iam4/
Blog: http://iansblog.jandi.co.nz
WAND Network Research Group
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Re: [2.6 patch] the overdue eepro100 removal

2007-07-02 Thread Bill Davidsen

Adrian Bunk wrote:

This patch contains the overdue removal of the eepro100 driver.

Signed-off-by: Adrian Bunk [EMAIL PROTECTED]

The hardware supported by this driver is still in use, thanks. It's 
probably easier to leave the eepro100 driver in than find anyone who 
wants to investigate why the other driver (e100? from memory) doesn't 
work with some cards. As I recall this was suggested over a year ago and 
it was decided to leave it in, all of the reasons for doing so still 
seem valid. There really doesn't seem to be a benefit, it's not like 
people are working night and day to support new cards for this chip.


--
Bill Davidsen [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked.  - from Slashdot
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Re: [2.6 patch] the overdue eepro100 removal

2007-07-02 Thread Kok, Auke

Bill Davidsen wrote:

Adrian Bunk wrote:

This patch contains the overdue removal of the eepro100 driver.

Signed-off-by: Adrian Bunk [EMAIL PROTECTED]

The hardware supported by this driver is still in use, thanks. It's 
probably easier to leave the eepro100 driver in than find anyone who 
wants to investigate why the other driver (e100? from memory) doesn't 
work with some cards. As I recall this was suggested over a year ago and 
it was decided to leave it in, all of the reasons for doing so still 
seem valid. There really doesn't seem to be a benefit, it's not like 
people are working night and day to support new cards for this chip.




please see the thread Re: [PATCH] fix e100 rx path on ARM (was [PATCH] e100 rx: 
or s and el bits) which is discussing a fix for this issue and currently being 
worked.


eepro100 will *still* be removed once e100 is fixed to support those devices.

Moreover, we now also have a fix for the e100 IPMI issues on some tyan boards 
(patch coming this week!). That hopefully solves all e100 issues that are still 
open.


Auke
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Re: [2.6 patch] the overdue eepro100 removal

2007-07-01 Thread Kok, Auke

Adrian Bunk wrote:

This patch contains the overdue removal of the eepro100 driver.



...

this needs to be resceduled for 2.6.24 (at least). We're hoping to merge the 
proposed changes (still being worked on) in .23. Milton Miller and David Acker 
are working on that.


Auke
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Re: [2.6 patch] the overdue eepro100 removal

2007-07-01 Thread Jeff Garzik

Kok, Auke wrote:
this needs to be resceduled for 2.6.24 (at least). We're hoping to merge 
the proposed changes (still being worked on) in .23. Milton Miller and 
David Acker are working on that.


Quite agreed.

Jeff


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