Re: [PATCH net-next] drivers/net: delete old 8bit ISA 3c501 driver.

On Saturday 19 May 2012 00:03:06 Paul Gortmaker wrote:

[Re: [PATCH net-next] drivers/net: delete old 8bit ISA 3c501 driver.] On 

18/05/2012 (Fri 20:16) Ondrej Zary wrote:

quoted

On Friday 18 May 2012 19:39:29 Paul Gortmaker wrote:

quoted

It was amusing that linux was able to make use of this 1980's
technology on machines long past its intended lifespan, but
it probably should go now -- it is causing issues in some
distros[1], and while that might be fixable, it is just not
worth it.

[1]
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-networking-3/3com-3c501-c
ard- not-detecting-934344/

That looks like a bug elsewhere and removing this driver will not fix it.

You miss the point.  We've got someone with a modern i7 machine who is
getting confused by seeing messages from some ancient 3c501 driver, but
he doesn't have the context to know it is ancient and the message is a
red herring.  Will it fix a distro's broken init that tries to modprobe
everything?  No.  Will it help by not muddying the waters with
meaningless printk from 3c501 that confuse users?  Yes.

Are you going to remove all drivers that complain that the HW is not present 
because some broken script is trying to modprobe them all? Or only the first 
one? 3c501 is probably the first in alphabet. You remove that and the script 
will modprobe 3c503 then...

-- 
Ondrej Zary