Adrian Bunk wrote:
On Sat, Sep 08, 2007 at 01:44:20PM -0400, Bill Davidsen wrote:
...
That was with 2.6.22.5 (or so), dropped back to an old kernel with sk98lin,
previously had uptimes in three digit days. Up for a week or so now.
There is a real long-term advantage of removing drivers like sk98lin
because it forces people to report bugs if the new driver doesn't work
instead of giving them the workaround of using the obsolete driver.
The issue is that sk98lin is only obsolete because you say so! skge
crashes the system, as Chris reports, sky2 just stops passing bits and
behaves as if the network cable were idle, no error messages of any
nature, ping claims it's sending packets, tcpdump claims packets are
being sent, the switch never blinks and systems on the switch see no
packets. Again, no error messages, no dumps, nothing which would help
you debug it, and it happens after some undefined time.
skge and sky2 are up to eight or ten versions now, and they still don't
work. Just because a driver works doesn't mean it's obsolete.
And this has the (at first sight surprising) effect that removing code
results in an improvement of the kernel.
Haven't tried later kernels, don't intend to, while no network is really
secure, it not really useful.
You are a regular reader of linux-kernel, and therefore the sk98lin
removal can hardly be a surprise for you. If you prefer whining over
helping to improve the kernel that's your choice...
I am trying to "improve the kernel" by advocating not removing reliable
drivers in favor of unreliable drivers. Saying a driver is better
because it has a clean design and good code is something I would expect
from someone who hadn't written or used code. If skge and sky2 were so
clean you wouldn't still be chasing obscure bugs after the driver had
been in the kernel for six+ versions, you wouldn't have me wasting time
trying to get a more secure kernel which is still reliable, wouldn't
have Willy Tarreau suggesting you should be marking sk98lin as obsolete
and leaving it in, wouldn't have someone maintaining sk98lin as a patch,
wouldn't have Chris Stromsoe getting hard lock-ups. No matter how ugly
sk98lin looks, and how well designed skge and sky2 may be, reliability
is not a beauty contest.
The volume of complaint should give you a hint that in this case the new
drivers aren't usefully stable for many people, and that you are
advocating a removal which is at least premature. If you can't admit
you're wrong on this one, you can say you have reconsidered the timing
of removal in light of new information.
--
bill davidsen <[email protected]>
CTO TMR Associates, Inc
Doing interesting things with small computers since 1979
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