Re: Patch for link detection for R8169

[Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu]

On Tue, 06 Sep 2005 21:46:02 +0200, Francois Romieu said:
> Miroslaw Mieszczak <mieszcz@zabrze.zigzag.pl> :
> > There is a patch to driver of RLT8169 network card. This match make 
> > possible detection of the link status even if network interface is down.
> > This is usefull for laptop users.
> 
> (side note: there is maintainer entry for the r8169 and network related
> patches are welcome on netdev@vger.kernel.org)
> 
> Can you elaborate why it is usefull for laptop users ?

Desktops and rack mounts you tend to leave that RJ45 plugged into the back
all the time.  As a result, "no link" is a rare error condition.

On the other hand, laptops are often sitting around with no RJ45 in sight.
Being able to detect "card present but no cable plugged in" can be useful in
startup scripts and the like, so you can do something like

if [ link-is-up eth3 ];
then
	ifup eth3;
fi

and avoid throwing nasty error messages (and even worse, timeouts) trying to
bring up the card if there's nothing plugged in.  There's no sense in trying to
do the whole DHCP thing (or whatever you need to do) if you can tell beforehand
that it will fail....

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