[vortex] Quick poll

[Bogdan Costescu]

On Wed, 2 Apr 2003, Donald Becker wrote:

> [[ Quick poll: I've been considering changing the configuration EEPROM
> report.  The current semantics are
>    -e  Show the interpreted settings
>    -ee  Also show the whole EEPROM contents numerically
>    -eee  For EEPROM values that look like ASCII, print the characters at the
>          end of each numeric output line.

I don't know how useful the last entry is, but if kept I would suggest 
merging the last two. IMHO the added value of this is too small to have 
its own verbosity level...

As to having everything available from one "e"... I don't know but I think 
that the current output from the debug tools is a bit scary for a first 
time user with all the numerical output and the fact that the output is 
long. So my suggestion would be to:
- put some important interpreted output but from each category (card 
status, MII, EEPROM) in the default invocation (without any options) and 
make it such that everything fits on one screen (80x24 lines max). This 
allows a quick check from the user if he/she understands what the output 
means :-) But also print a message that, in case of problems, the diag 
reports sent to the list should be obtained with some more verbosity - to 
save bandwidth from questions like "this is the diag output, what else can 
I provide"
- allow more verbosity for reports; this could probably be also only 
interpreted output, but as complete as possible. This is to save 
debugger's time from checking in the docs what different values mean :-)
This is something that I started to code at some point, but didn't got 
very far; I think that sent you (Donald) some part which was a partial 
interpretation of EEPROM code.
- allow even more verbosity for reports where the interpretation is not 
known or clear - numerical output (as raw as possible) should be included 
here.

Another scheme might be:
- don't display anything for default invocation except a message that 
details from a specific category can be obtained through -a, -e, -m or 
something
- display only basic info for -a, -e, -m etc.
- display more interpreted/complete output for -aa, -ee, -mm or "-a -v", 
"-e -v", "-m -v" or something
- display raw data for -eee, -mmm or "-e -vv", "-m -vv"...

Another suggestion which is a bit separate and probably harder to 
implement but would also probably help is to allow the diag program to 
read raw data spit by a previous run (last level or verbosity) and try to 
interpret it - I guess this would be doable once the intermediate 
completely interpreted output is done... This would save some of my time 
at least :-)

In any case, let the user know that the basic output is not enough for 
debugging and more verbose output is needed.

Huh, after going back through the message, I think that some of the 
suggestions are a bit radical, so take them only as a wish-list :-)

-- 
Bogdan Costescu

IWR - Interdisziplinaeres Zentrum fuer Wissenschaftliches Rechnen
Universitaet Heidelberg, INF 368, D-69120 Heidelberg, GERMANY
Telephone: +49 6221 54 8869, Telefax: +49 6221 54 8868
E-mail: Bogdan.Costescu@IWR.Uni-Heidelberg.De