On 14 Apr 17:34, Jakub Kicinski wrote:
On Fri, 14 Apr 2023 15:20:01 -0700 Saeed Mahameed wrote:
>> Officially we test only 3 GA FWs back. The fact that mlx5 is a generic CX
>> driver makes it really hard to test all the possible combinations, so we
>> need to be strict with how back we want to officially support and test old
>> generations.
>
>Would you be able to pull the datapoints for what 3 GA FWs means
>in case of CX4? Release number and date when it was released?
https://network.nvidia.com/files/related-docs/eol/LCR-000821.pdf
Since CX4 was EOL last year, it is going to be hard to find this info but
let me check my email archive..
12.28.2006 27-Sep-20 - recommended version
12.26.xxxx 12-Dec-2019
12.24.1000 2-Dec-18
That's basically 3 years of support. Seems fairly reasonable.
>> Upgrade FW when possible, it is always easier than upgrading the kernel.
>> Anyways this was a very rare FW/Arch bug, We should've exposed an
>> explicit cap for this new type of PF when we had the chance, now it's too
>> late since a proper fix will require FW and Driver upgrades and breaking
>> the current solution we have over other OSes as well.
>>
>> Yes I can craft an if condition to explicitly check for chip id and FW
>> version for this corner case, which has no precedence in mlx5, but I prefer
>> to ask to upgrade FW first, and if that's an acceptable solution, I would
>> like to keep the mlx5 clean and device agnostic as much as possible.
>
>IMO you either need a fully fleshed out FW update story, with advanced
>warnings for a few releases, distributing the FW via linux-firmware or
>fwupdmgr or such. Or deal with the corner cases in the driver :(
Completely agree, I will start an internal discussion ..
>We can get Paul to update, sure, but if he noticed so quickly the
>question remains how many people out in the wild will get affected
>and not know what the cause is?
Right, I will make sure this will be addressed, will let you know how we
will handle this, will try to post a patch early next cycle, but i will
need to work with Arch and release managers for this, so it will take a
couple of weeks to formalize a proper solution.
What do we do now, tho? If the main side effect of a revert is that
users of a newfangled device with an order of magnitude lower
deployment continue to see a warning/error in the logs - I'm leaning
towards applying it :(
I tend to agree with you but let me check with the FW architect what he has
to offer, either we provide a FW version check or another more accurate
FW cap test that could solve the issue for everyone. If I don't come up with
a solution by next Wednesday I will repost your revert in my next net PR
on Wednesday. You can mark it awaiting-upstream for now, if that works for
you.
