From: Matt Mackall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Wed, 7 Sep 2005 10:04:29 -0700
> Netpoll is intended to be a replacement for the requirement of serial > cables for doing things like tricky oops capture and kgdb. > > If we move to softirq-only processing, it will not be a serial cable > replacement. If you want to replace what serial console and serial kgdb is doing, you will need to replicate what that stuff does, which is to wholly take over the driving of the hardware with completely new interfaces and driver methods that wholly drive the hardware. The serial console and kgdb stuff tends to not use the existing interfaces and expect them to do new stuff like netpoll does. This got mentioned a few times already, but it keeps getting lost. You want to get netpoll with minimal driver changes, and that simply isn't possible. HW IRQ locking is very bad for latency and performance overall, so our goal is to minimize it across the tree as much as possible. If you want to return to a legacy situation where we have HW IRQ disabling in all the critical sections of our network drivers, do it in your own tree, don't make the whole world pay for it. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe netdev" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
