Subject: Re: hotplug e1000 failed after 32 times
From: Li Shaohua <shaohua.li@intel.com>
To: Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@pobox.com>
Cc: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>, lkml <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
       "David S. Miller" <davem@redhat.com>
In-Reply-To: <414B7470.4000703@pobox.com>
References: <1095396793.10407.9.camel@sli10-desk.sh.intel.com>
	 <20040916221406.1f3764e0.akpm@osdl.org>
	 <1095411933.10407.29.camel@sli10-desk.sh.intel.com>
	 <20040917161920.16d18333.akpm@osdl.org>  <414B7470.4000703@pobox.com>
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Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2004 08:51:53 +0800
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On Sat, 2004-09-18 at 07:34, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> All this work and code for such an uncommon case??
> 
> First off, any settings which are _indexed_ are almost guaranteed 
> broken.  For reasons as we see here, and others.  Any 
> "setting_foo[board_number]" should be found and eliminated instead.
> 
> Even if you allocate and free board numbers as described, how precisely 
> do you propose to predict which settings belong to which hotplugged 
> board?  Look at the problem, and you realize that the board<->setting 
> association becomes effectively _random_ for any adapter not present at 
> modprobe time.
> 
> The best model is to set these settings via netlink/ethtool after 
> registering the interface, but before bringing it up.
I'm not familiar with the NIC driver, but this problem really is
annoying. The gurus, please consider a solution. It's not an uncommon
case. I believe it's common in a big system with hotplug support. I can
understand why the driver doesn't support more than 32 a card, but one
card with 32 times hotplug failed is a little ugly.

Thanks,
Shaohua

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