Wolfgang Denk wrote:
Dear Gary Jennejohn,
In message 20081020182635.4ed9ca48@ernst.jennejohn.org you wrote:
I looked at this some more. eth_initialize() is called in every architecture-specific library which means changing 8 files to move it up to before the initialization of netconsole.
netconsole is intialized in devices_init() which is called even before console_init_r() and long before eth_initialize().
Well, maybe there is a less intrusive approach to solve the problem.
One alrernative which occurs to me would be to introduce a new flag GD_FLG_ETHINIT, but this is even worse because it requires modifying 12 header files and 3 or more C files.
Hm... let's sum up what exactly the problem is; you wrote:
| This causes problems because u-boot will try to write to nc as soon | as GD_FLG_DEVINIT is set in gd->flags, which happens before the | network devices are initialized in net/eth.c. This results in error | messages being spewed out.
I read this that what we actually want to do is stopping NC to transmit too early. Correct?
Well, nc_send_packet() (see "drivers/net/netconsole.c") can be easily shortcut if we find a way to make eth_get_dev() return NULL.
And eth_get_dev() (see "net/eth.c") just returns "eth_current".
So maybe there is a way to make sure "eth_current" is set to NULL until it's OK for netconsole to transmit?
Maybe, maybe eventually the real cause of your problems is that "eth_current" is not read as NULL while running from flash? Maybe changing the declaration in "net/eth.c" into something like this would help?
static struct eth_device *eth_current __attribute__ ((section(".data"))) = NULL;
What do you think?
This looks like a good idea. eth_current is a variable that should definitely be in a known state.
Best regards,
Wolfgang Denk
regards, Ben