msleep_interruptible() in ethtool ioctl and keyboard input

["Venkatesan, Ganesh" <ganesh.venkatesan@intel.com>]

In response of ethtool -p eth? [time], e1000 calls
msleep_interruptible() to sleep for <time> seconds or forever if <time>
is not specified. In the meantime the NIC LEDs are blinked. This works
fine in all cases.

With 2.4.x kernels this continues to work fine, even if the device
generates an interrupt (remove the cable, for instance) while blinking
is ON. 

With 2.6.0+ kernels when the cable is removed, the NIC LEDs blink fine
but the keyboard stops responding (only KDB and CTL-ALT-DEL work, all
other keystrokes are buffered but not echoed back/acted on) till
msleep_interruptible completes. Mouse works fine.

I went backwards through the 2.5.x kernels and found that this change in
behavior happened between 2.5.50 (where this works fine) and 2.5.51
(where this is broken). A slew of console driver changes went into
2.5.51 but I have not been able to locate which change is the cause for
this behavior.

Please send me comments/ideas for further tests/questions for more data.

Following is the logic that implements the blinking:

static void
e1000_led_blink_callback(unsigned long data)
{
        struct e1000_adapter *adapter = (struct e1000_adapter *) data;

        if(test_and_change_bit(E1000_LED_ON, &adapter->led_status))
                e1000_led_off(&adapter->hw);
        else
                e1000_led_on(&adapter->hw);

        mod_timer(&adapter->blink_timer, jiffies + E1000_ID_INTERVAL);
}

static int
e1000_phys_id(struct net_device *netdev, uint32_t data)
{
        struct e1000_adapter *adapter = netdev->priv;

        if(!data || data > (uint32_t)(MAX_SCHEDULE_TIMEOUT / HZ))
                data = (uint32_t)(MAX_SCHEDULE_TIMEOUT / HZ);

        if(!adapter->blink_timer.function) {
                init_timer(&adapter->blink_timer);
                adapter->blink_timer.function =
e1000_led_blink_callback;
                adapter->blink_timer.data = (unsigned long) adapter;
        }

        e1000_setup_led(&adapter->hw);
        mod_timer(&adapter->blink_timer, jiffies);

        msleep_interruptible(data * 1000);
        del_timer_sync(&adapter->blink_timer);
        e1000_led_off(&adapter->hw);
        clear_bit(E1000_LED_ON, &adapter->led_status);
        e1000_cleanup_led(&adapter->hw);

        return 0;
}
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