From owner-freebsd-hackers  Tue Aug  4 22:48:52 1998
Return-Path: <owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG>
Received: (from majordom@localhost)
          by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id WAA16151
          for freebsd-hackers-outgoing; Tue, 4 Aug 1998 22:48:52 -0700 (PDT)
          (envelope-from owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG)
Received: (from wpaul@localhost)
          by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id WAA16103;
          Tue, 4 Aug 1998 22:48:36 -0700 (PDT)
          (envelope-from wpaul)
From: Bill Paul <wpaul>
Message-Id: <199808050548.WAA16103@hub.freebsd.org>
Subject: Re: Etherlink XL driver
In-Reply-To: <xzplnp4afjb.fsf@hrotti.ifi.uio.no> from =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Dag=2DErling_Coidan_Sm=F8rgrav?= at "Aug 4, 98 06:16:24 pm"
To: dag-erli@ifi.uio.no (Dag-Erling Coidan =?iso-8859-1?Q?Sm=F8rgrav?=)
Date: Tue, 4 Aug 1998 22:48:34 -0700 (PDT)
Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, current@FreeBSD.ORG, mike@smith.net.au
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL32 (25)]
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Precedence: bulk
X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG

> Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au> writes:
> > > The Etherlink XL driver seems to be working fine. How about committing
> > > it to -current and removing the XL probe/attach code from the vx
> > > driver?
> > The fact that Bill hasn't committed it already tends to indicate he's 
> > still in testing.  I wouldn't want to rush him *too* much. 8)
> 
> Well, this is what -current is for, after all. And considering that
> noone has reported any serious trouble so far, and that there is a
> fallback driver (vx) in case problems arise, I don't see any reason
> not to commit it.
> 

Putting code in -current when you know there's something wrong with it
is just... well, wrong. And I know there's at least one bug in the XL
driver. I knew there were two until tonight, but I just fixed one.
(Unfortunately, it was a problem I could not reproduce in the lab with
the hardware that I have: the MII access code had a problem somewhere
which caused it to fail to read any PHY registers on certain boards
which a) report a PCI revision of 0 and b) were installed on relatively
slow machines. Unfortunately, my 3c905B is integrated onto the motherboard
of a 400Mhz PII, which makes it hard to move it to a slower machine.
To compound matters, the problem card and its owner are in Brazil.
Fortunately, the gentleman who owns (Hi Rodolfo!) it was able to give
me access to the system via ssh and I was able to debug the problem
using a hastily contrived LKM.) The remaining problem is that I know
of at least one 3c900 board that doesn't work right.

(Incidentally, since this is going to -hackers: if you're having a
problem with the XL driver generating an error message that says
'MII without any PHY!' and you have a 3c905B card, please grab the
latest version of the driver from www.freebsd.org/~wpaul/3Com and
let me know if the problem goes away.)

The -current branch may be bleeding edge, but I don't feel that means
that I shouldn't try my best to work out all the bugs before I commit
new code to it, which is what I'm doing, at least when I'm not being
interrupted by Real Work (tm).

That said, my plan is to commit the 3.0 version to -current sometime
next week. After a couple more weeks there, I'll commit the 2.2
version.

-Bill

To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message