Re: 2.3.4x softnet watchdog and (isdn) demand dialing

[Henner Eisen]

>>>>> "Alan" == Alan Cox <[e-mail]> writes:
>
>irda and some wan devices also need this. I would prefer we hid the details.
>How about allowing adding to the netif macros so there is a way to say
>both stop and pause. Unfortunately stop seems to have been used for pause 8(
>
>	 netif_suspend_queue(dev)
>	 netif_resume_queue(dev)
>
>and hide the watchdog in the nice softnet API
>

Maybe an alternative would be not to temorarily suspend the watchdog,
but to allow for temorarily increasing the timeout value. e.g.

netif_stop_queue_longer(dev, jiffies+new_timeout);

or

netif_change_timeout(dev,new_timeout);

or just

dev->watchdog_timeo = new_timeout;
(is dynamically changing the timeout value officially allowed? Even from
interrupt context?)

When doing demand-dialing, we could temporarily increase the timeout value
appropriately, while the watchdog keeps fulfilling its duties and might
even reveil problems related to failed demand dialing. When the demand
dial connection is up, we would reset the watchdog timeout to its default
value before we call netif_wake_queue().

Henner