Return-path: Received: from smtp1.linux-foundation.org ([140.211.169.13]:41368 "EHLO smtp1.linux-foundation.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S966073Ab0BZUmv (ORCPT ); Fri, 26 Feb 2010 15:42:51 -0500 Date: Fri, 26 Feb 2010 12:42:29 -0800 (PST) From: Linus Torvalds To: Michael Buesch cc: Larry Finger , "John W. Linville" , "David S. Miller" , wireless , Greg Kroah-Hartman Subject: Re: Make b43 driver fall back gracefully to PIO mode after fatal DMA errors In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: <201002262059.02383.mb@bu3sch.de> <201002262120.37438.mb@bu3sch.de> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-wireless-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Fri, 26 Feb 2010, Linus Torvalds wrote: > > So send me a patch. I'll try it. But I have no hardware docs, nor any > information about how that SSB bridge is supposed to work, or why DMA > might be failing. Btw, I also object to your argument that "Well, my original plan was to get rid of controller_restart and not add yet another user of it, because it is extremely broken and racy. The locking in the whole driver is completely braindead due to the mere existence of this function." is a reason to not apply the patch. The patch makes the driver _work_. Not on some odd-ball hardware either, but a regular Dell laptop. So if you have a patch to remove controller_restart, I'm sure I can modify mine to work on top of such a new world order. But if you do _not_ have such a patch, then that is no argument for keeping the driver in a known-broken state. The fact that the driver locking is odd is _not_ a reason to not fix other issues that are totally unrelated to locking. Linus