[vortex] Re: [eepro100] True on TRANSMIT ERROR TIMEOUT

Andrew Morton andrewm@uow.edu.au
Tue, 13 Jun 2000 21:32:03 +1000


Daniel Soto Alvarez wrote:
> 
> PLEASE!, make a modified driver, that when RESTART de NIC, restart ALL
> components (chip, transceiver, queues) and, THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT,
> "RESTART THE ETHERNET INTERFACE WITH THE KERNEL".

This is sensible advice.

Sure, it shouldn't be necessary.  The drivers/NICs shouldn't be doing
this in the first place.

But shit happens.

And there are many, many times when a wedged driver can be resurrected
by a down/up or a rmmod/insmod.  This means that the driver _could_ have
automtically recovered in tx_timeout, but it simply did not do so.

Can anyone suggest a reason why we _shouldn't_ simply reset the NIC to
the utmost possible extent in tx_timeout?  Restart media selection,
reinitialise ring buffers, etc, etc?