Re: RedBoot - Try initializing default ethernet first

[Gary Thomas <gary at mlbassoc dot com>]

On Fri, 2004-08-13 at 06:14, Mark Salter wrote:
> >>>>> Andrew Lunn writes:
> 
> > On Tue, Jul 06, 2004 at 12:01:29PM +0100, David Vrabel wrote:
> >> Hi,
> >> 
> >> The attached patches changes the way RedBoot initializes the ethernet 
> >> devices.  Now it tries the default before falling back to trying all the 
> >> others.  This can speed up boot times as ethernet initialization can be 
> >> a slow process with some drivers (auto-negotiation timeouts etc.) and 
> >> now (in most cases) only one ethernet device (the default) will be 
> >> initialized.
> 
> > Hi David
> 
> > Sorry for the long response time. This is more Gary's area but he
> > seems to of missed this patch.
> 
> > I don't like the patch as is. It changes the default behavour. Only
> > the default_device will be started, leaving the others
> > uninitialised. People who are using the none default device are
> > suddenly going to have a system that does not work.
> 
> "none" device? Is there such a thing?
> 
> Anyway, the suggested patch restores the original behavior I 
> setup when I added the support for multiple net devices. Not
> sure why Gary changed that (I wasn't paying attention :).

I changed it so that all network devices would have a chance to provide
default ESA (or other configs) for 'fconfig'.  Some network drivers only
initialize their fallback defaults during initialization.  Without 
initializing them all, devices other than the default would never show
up in the 'fconfig' database.  

Arguments can be made for doing this both ways (I'm still not sure which
I prefer), so maybe the CDL option is a wise way to go.  i.e. have an
option which enables either "initialize all, then try" vs. "init one,
try, repeat until found"

-- 
Gary Thomas <gary@mlbassoc.com>
MLB Associates