Hi! In contrast to some other Linux network drivers (notably eepro100) your 8139too 0.9.26 doesn't allow access to the link beat status when the interface is down, i.e. SIOCETHTOOL, SIOCGMIIPHY, SIOCGMIIREG, SIOCDEVPRIVATE and SIOCDEVPRIVATE+1 fail. This seems to me not to be optimal, since some programs like automatic plug-in detection daemons (such as ifd, netplugd or my own ifplugd) rely on being able to query the link status when the interface is down. I removed the two lines that prevent that access from my version of the driver and still have a perfectly working system. If there are no good reasons for not removing these lines I suggest doing this in your upstream driver, as well. I attached a trivial patch doing just that. Another related issue: Currently access to the link beat status via SIOETHTOOL and SIOCGMII* is not allowed for normal users. However it might be desirable to change this for being able to develop some applets which show the link status on your desktop's status bar. There is even a certain inconsistency and security issue: the older SIOGDEVPRIVATE ioctls (including those for modifying MII registers) work for normal users, since the security checks in net/core/dev.c only work for SIOCETHTOOL and SIOCGMII*, not for SIODEVPRIVATE; they are passed untested to the specific driver, which doesn't check for security any further. (at least 8139too doesn't do so) I'd suggest loosening access rights for querying the link beat status while aggravating the access rights for writing MII register access. Shall I prepare a patch doing both for for 8139too? KUTGW, Lennart PS: the url of my specific plugging daemon is http://www.stud.uni-hamburg.de/users/lennart/projects/ifplugd/ -- name { Lennart Poettering } mail { XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX } icq { 11060553 } www { http://www.poettering.de/lennart/ } loc { hamburg, germany } pgp { 0x1A015CC4 } hack { .phi. }
--- 8139too.c.dist Thu Oct 31 23:45:04 2002
+++ 8139too.c Thu Oct 31 23:45:46 2002
@@ -2449,8 +2449,8 @@
int rc = 0;
int phy = tp->phys[0] & 0x3f;
- if (!netif_running(dev))
- return -EINVAL;
+// if (!netif_running(dev))
+// return -EINVAL;
if (cmd != SIOCETHTOOL) {
/* With SIOCETHTOOL, this would corrupt the pointer. */
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