On Fri, 18 Sep 1998 kuznet@ms2.inr.ac.ru wrote:
> "tbusy" was never used as lock (at least in tulip.c)
> Transmitter is locked by bh_atomic in normal mode,
> and by tx_semaphore in fastroute mode.
Btw, can we get rid of all the "dev->tbusy" and "dev->interrupt" flags,
and just use a regular spinlock or something around each driver?
dev->tbusy says "My TX queue is full, please stop asking me to send
new packets until this flag clears, thanks".
dev->tbusy has always been a bug, with no redeeming features. It's really
only a way to say "yes, I have a bug, and I want to know about it" instead
of fixing the problem properly.
Incorrect for dev->tbusy, it has a specific purpose and does that job
well. The problem is that Becker's drivers in particular decided to
give it this "new use" for start_xmit/bh atomicity which is completely
bogus.
dev->interrupt I believe falls into a similar category, no code
outside of drivers even reference it and for all cases I see it
used it is "hey we reentered the interrupt handler, report a
debugging message and return" which is complete garbage.
So I think dev->interrupt should disappear, and dev->tbusy should stay
as is.
Later,
David S. Miller
davem@dm.cobaltmicro.com
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/