On Tue, 15 Sep 2020 15:57:16 +0300 Oded Gabbay wrote: > On Mon, Sep 14, 2020 at 7:50 PM Jakub Kicinski <k...@kernel.org> wrote: > > What's the use for a networking device which only communicates with > > itself, other than testing? > > No use, and we do have a suite of tests that runs from user-space on > the device after we move the interfaces to loopback mode. > The main problem, as Omer said, is that we have two H/W bugs: > > 1. Where you need to reset the entire SoC in case you want to move a > single interface into (or out of) loopback mode. So doing it via > ethtool will cause a reset to the entire SoC, and if you want to move > all 10 ports to loopback mode, you need to reset the device 10 times > before you can actually use that. > > 2. Our 10 ports are divided into 5 groups of 2 ports each, from H/W > POV. That means if you move port 0 to loopback mode, it will affect > port 1 (and vice-versa). I don't think we want that behavior. > > That's why we need this specific exception to the rule and do it via > debugfs. I understand it is not common practice, but due to H/W bugs > we can't workaround, we ask this exception.
Are those tests open source? Are you sure you need this upstream? Are your users going to run those tests?
