r8169: Unconditionally disabling ASPM

Dear Linux folks,


Running the Firmware Test Suite (fwts) [1] on an ASRock E350M1, it
suggests that ASPM should be enabled.

The module r8169 disables ASPM since the commit below.

commit ba04c7c93bbcb48ce880cf75b6e9dffcd79d4c7b
Author: Stanislaw Gruszka [off-list ref]
Date:   Tue Feb 22 02:00:11 2011 +0000

    r8169: disable ASPM
    
    For some time is known that ASPM is causing troubles on r8169, i.e. make
    device randomly stop working without any errors in dmesg.
    
    Currently Tomi Leppikangas reports that system with r8169 device hangs
    with MCE errors when ASPM is enabled:
    https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=642861#c4
    
    Lets disable ASPM for r8169 devices at all, to avoid problems with
    r8169 PCIe devices at least for some users.
    
    Reported-by: Tomi Leppikangas [off-list ref]
    Cc: stable@kernel.org
    Signed-off-by: Stanislaw Gruszka [off-list ref]
    Signed-off-by: David S. Miller [off-list ref]

As over five years have passed now, do you think that is still needed?
I wonder why no module parameter was added back then, where users could
enable ASPM if it works on their systems? Because there is no such
situation and it always fails?


Thanks,

Paul


[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FirmwareTestSuite

Paul Menzel [off-list ref] :
[...]

As over five years have passed now, do you think that is still needed?
I wonder why no module parameter was added back then, where users could
enable ASPM if it works on their systems? Because there is no such
situation and it always fails?

It was enabled again (d64ec841517a25f6d468bde9f67e5b4cffdc67c7) then
disabled (4521e1a94279ce610d3f9b7945c17d581f804242). It's closer
to 3.5 years :o)

Module parameters are frowned upon.

Lin, is there some interest in selectively [*] enabling (or disabling)
ASPM support in the r8169 driver or will it be unreliable ?

[*] Based on DMI information for instance.

-- 
Ueimor