Re: [PATCH] arm64: defconfig: Build STMMAC Ethernet driver into the kernel for NFS boot

[Jon Hunter]

Hi Geert,

On 23/05/2025 12:54, Krzysztof Kozlowski wrote:
> On 23/05/2025 13:39, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
> > On Tue, 6 May 2025 at 12:47, Prabhakar <prabhakar.csengg@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > > From: Lad Prabhakar <prabhakar.mahadev-lad.rj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > >
> > > Enable `CONFIG_STMMAC_ETH` as built-in (`y`) instead of a module (`m`) to
> > > ensure the Ethernet driver is available early in the boot process. This
> > > is necessary for platforms mounting the root filesystem via NFS, as the
> > > driver must be available before the root filesystem is accessed.
> > >
> > > Signed-off-by: Lad Prabhakar <prabhakar.mahadev-lad.rj@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > > ---
> > > With this change, the Renesas RZ/V2H EVK board can boot from NFS
> > > which has the DWMAC IP.
> >
> > Reviewed-by: Geert Uytterhoeven <geert+renesas@xxxxxxxxx>
> > i.e. will queue in renesas-devel for v6.17.
>
> With my Nacked, please.


I was surprised to see this change in -next. We also use NFS for testing 
and we use the dwmac drivers. To date we are explictly building these 
drivers into the initramfs but I noticed that that is now failing 
because this driver is no longer a module by default. This is easy for 
us to fix.

I do agree that if we start to build every networking driver into the 
kernel it is going to bloat. Yes I do see the kernel image growing 
regardless of this, but nonetheless it seems better to just build as a 
module IMO.

Jon

--
nvpublic