On 09/30/2014 05:27 AM, Michal Kazior wrote:

On 29 September 2014 18:05, Ben Greear [off-list ref] wrote:

quoted

On 09/29/2014 01:24 AM, Kalle Valo wrote:

quoted

greearb@candelatech.com writes:

quoted

From: Ben Greear <redacted>

This gives user-space a normal-ish way to detect that
firmware has failed to start and that a reboot is
probably required.

Signed-off-by: Ben Greear <redacted>

[...]

quoted

quoted

quoted

-    return 0;
+out:
+    /* If we have failed to power-up, it may take a reboot to
+     * get the NIC back online.
+     * Set flag accordinly so that user-space can know.
+     */
+    ar->fw_powerup_failed = !!ret;
+    return ret;
 }

Would it be better to use ATH10K_STATE_WEDGED for this and then just
export the state value to user space? Or should we have two different
states, like FW_WEDGED and HW_WEDGED?

Current WEDGED state is more like ON. It assumes mac80211 will call
ath10k_stop().

Adding another state just for the sake of handling power up / reset
issues seems like an overkill to me.

quoted

I didn't want to mess with the state machine.  This counter
is just a clue to users that things might be badly wrong.  Some systems
might recover with another hard reset, some will hang the entire
system hard, and some will just stick in this state unable to
recover.  Some of my systems exhibit this last behaviour, so at
least with this patch I can warn the user that they need to
reboot to regain wifi functionality.

If power up fails the error should propagate to `ifconfig wlanX up`
(or whatever calling drv_start) eventually so I don't see the point in
having this counter.

Supplicant manages this, and programatically it is not at all easy to
figure out that the network is failing to come up because the firmware
is broken-and-can't-be-fixed-without-reboot.

The counter I added can be queried by a management tool and propagate a
clear error to the end user.

Thanks,
Ben

-- 
Ben Greear [off-list ref]
Candela Technologies Inc  http://www.candelatech.com