RE: [PATCH] ethtool_ops

[Feldman, Scott]

> Right now, each network driver which supports the ethtool 
> ioctl has its own implementation of everything from decoding 
> which ethtool ioctl it is, copying data to and from 
> userspace, marshalling and unmarshalling data from ethtool 
> packets, etc.  The current setup makes it impossible to use 
> alternative interfaces to get at the same data (eg sysfs) and 
> it's not exactly typesafe.

This is really cool!  Thanks for doing this Matthew.

Some questions:

* On get_gregs, for example, would it make sense to ->get_drvinfo
  so you'll know regdump_len and therefore can kmalloc an ethtool_regs
  with enough space to pass to ->get_regs?  Keep the kmalloc and
  kfree together.  Same for self_test, get_strings, and get_stats.
  For get_strings, size = max{n_stats, testinfo_len)*sizeof(u64).

* If the above is done, can we have one function type for the
ethtool_ops
  functions?  int f(struct netdev *, struct ethtool_cmd *).  The 
  drawback is the driver needs to cast to the specific ethtool_* struct.

* Can we get an HAVE_ETHTOOL_OPS defined in netdevice.h to support
  backward compat?

-scott