Re: [RFC] Status of orinoco_usb

From: Jes Sorensen <jes.sorensen@gmail.com>
To: Arend Van Spriel <arend.vanspriel@broadcom.com>,
	Kalle Valo <kvalo@codeaurora.org>,
	Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Cc: Sebastian Andrzej Siewior <bigeasy@linutronix.de>,
	netdev@vger.kernel.org, linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org,
	linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
	"David S. Miller" <davem@davemloft.net>,
	Jakub Kicinski <kuba@kernel.org>,
	Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
Subject: Re: [RFC] Status of orinoco_usb
Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2020 08:40:57 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <7f6e7c37-b7d6-1da4-6a3d-257603afd2ae@gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <0c67580b-1bed-423b-2f00-49eae20046aa@broadcom.com>

On 10/6/20 3:45 AM, Arend Van Spriel wrote:
> + Jes
> 
> On 10/5/2020 4:12 PM, Kalle Valo wrote:
>> Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> writes:
>>
>>> On Fri, Oct 02, 2020 at 01:53:58PM +0200, Sebastian Andrzej Siewior
>>> wrote:
>>>> On 2020-10-02 13:37:25 [+0200], Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
>>>>>> Is it possible to end up here in softirq context or is this a relic?
>>>>>
>>>>> I think it's a relic of where USB host controllers completed their
>>>>> urbs
>>>>> in hard-irq mode.  The BH/tasklet change is a pretty recent change.
>>>>
>>>> But the BH thingy for HCDs went in v3.12 for EHCI. XHCI was v5.5. My
>>>> guess would be that people using orinoco USB are on EHCI :)
>>>
>>> USB 3 systems run XHCI, which has a USB 2 controller in it, so these
>>> types of things might not have been noticed yet.  Who knows :)
>>>
>>>>>> Should it be removed?
>>>>>
>>>>> We can move it out to drivers/staging/ and then drop it to see if
>>>>> anyone
>>>>> complains that they have the device and is willing to test any
>>>>> changes.
>>>>
>>>> Not sure moving is easy since it depends on other files in that folder.
>>>> USB is one interface next to PCI for instance. Unless you meant to move
>>>> the whole driver including all interfaces.
>>>> I was suggesting to remove the USB bits.
>>>
>>> I forgot this was tied into other code, sorry.  I don't know what to
>>> suggest other than maybe try to fix it up the best that you can, and
>>> let's see if anyone notices...
>>
>> That's what I would suggest as well.
>>
>> These drivers for ancient hardware are tricky. Even if there doesn't
>> seem to be any users on the driver sometimes people pop up reporting
>> that it's still usable. We had that recently with one another wireless
>> driver (forgot the name already).
> 
> Quite a while ago I shipped an orinoco dongle to Jes Sorensen which he
> wanted to use for some intern project if I recall correctly. Guess that
> idea did not fly yet.

I had an outreachy intern who worked on some of it, so I shipped all my
Orinoco hardware to her. We never made as much progress as I had hoped,
and I haven't had time to work on it since.

Cheers,
Jes