Re: Broken ethernet on SolidRun cubox-i

[Russell King - ARM Linux admin <linux@armlinux.org.uk>]

On Fri, Jan 08, 2021 at 01:14:19PM +0100, Michael Walle wrote:
> Am 2021-01-08 13:01, schrieb Russell King - ARM Linux admin:
> > This sounds like a mess of indirection. What is "Christophs dtb"?
> > Why are there different dtbs out there for the same platform? If
> > there's changes necessary, why aren't they being submitted to the
> > mainline kernel?
> > 
> > In fact, why aren't users reporting these problems to mainline kernel
> > developers? Why do we have to have this tortuous bug reporting route
> > which makes testing fixes difficult?
> > 
> > This rather makes me not want to care about this.
> 
> Well first it was a suspected issue with 'my' change in the Atheros
> PHY driver, which turned out to be not the case. I _voluntarily_
> tried to debug the issue with a user (Christoph) just to find out
> that it is likely caused by the commit mentioned above. So for
> startes, why would I care? I just wanted to be kind and provide
> some help. If anything, this shows me, I should rather stick to
> my own problems.
> 
> So please advise Christoph, where he should report this bug.

There is, unfortunately, a long history where the appropriate kernel
developers have had no knowledge of bugs that have been introduced
by changes that have been made, simply because users report them on
things like web forums or other mailing lists.

In the normal process of things, the bugs have only found out about
years later, maybe when someone finally contacts the appropriate
kernel developers pointing out the problem.

A case in point was the removal of bogomips from /proc/cpuinfo, which
resulted in kernel developers being roasted by Linus when it was
pointed out that users had been reporting the problem on forums for
over a year. Apparently, it was _our_ fault for not knowing about
them.

Similar seems to be happening with my SFP work - it seems people would
much rather report problems on random forums around the Internet rather
than send an email to anyone who can fix the problem in mainline
kernels.

Kernel development is fundamentally a difficult, frustrating and
depressing activity.

-- 
RMK's Patch system: https://www.armlinux.org.uk/developer/patches/
FTTP is here! 40Mbps down 10Mbps up. Decent connectivity at last!

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