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Date: Sat, 2 Dec 2000 13:07:29 -0600 (CST)
From: Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@mandrakesoft.mandrakesoft.com>
To: Chris Wedgwood <cw@f00f.org>
cc: Donald Becker <becker@scyld.com>, Francois Romieu <romieu@cogenit.fr>,
        Russell King <rmk@arm.linux.org.uk>, Ivan Passos <lists@cyclades.com>,
        linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, netdev@oss.sgi.com
Subject: Re: [RFC] Configuring synchronous interfaces in Linux
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On Sun, 3 Dec 2000, Chris Wedgwood wrote:
>     > Russell King <rmk@arm.linux.org.uk> ?crit :
>     > [...]
>     > > We already have a standard interface for this, but many drivers do not
>     > > support it.  Its called "ifconfig eth0 media xxx":

> Actually, I starteed work on adding this to the 3c59x code last
> night; I am now a little dispondent though as it wasn't as simple as
> I first thought it might be.

Does 'ifconfig eth0 media xxx' wind up calling dev->set_config?

If yes, my guess is correct, I think the proper solution is to:
* create a generic set_config, which does nothing but convert the calls'
semantics into ethtool semantics, and
* add ethtool support to the specific driver

And you might even go so far as to create a generic MII implementation
of ethtool support, so that existing drivers can simply plug in their
mdio_{read,write} functions to automatically get full ethtool support.
(disclaimer:  this is a spur-of-the-moment thought, creating a generic
MII module for ethtool support may not be feasible)

drivers/net/sis900.c implements set_config, if you want an example..

Finally, if you want to just use ethtool directly, grab the SRPM and
install it on your system.

	Jeff



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