> Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH net-next 2/9] net: phy: Guard against the presence of > a > netdev > > On Thu, May 23, 2019 at 01:20:38AM +0000, Ioana Ciornei wrote: > > A prerequisite for PHYLIB to work in the absence of a struct > > net_device is to not access pointers to it. > > > > Changes are needed in the following areas: > > > > - Printing: In some places netdev_err was replaced with phydev_err. > > > > - Incrementing reference count to the parent MDIO bus driver: If there > > is no net device, then the reference count should definitely be > > incremented since there is no chance that it was an Ethernet driver > > who registered the MDIO bus. > > > > - Sysfs links are not created in case there is no attached_dev. > > > > - No netif_carrier_off is done if there is no attached_dev. > > Hi Ioana > > Looking at the functions changed here, they seem to be related to > phy_attach(), > phy_connect(), and phy_detach() etc. Is the intention you can call these > functions and pass a NULL pointer for the net_device? > > Andrew
Hi Andrew, Yes, the intention is exactly to pass a NULL pointer for the net_device from PHYLINK. The changes that do this are in "[RFC,net-next,5/9] net: phylink: Add phylink_create_raw". -- Ioana
