Re: [RFC PATCH net-next 1/3] ethtool: Add link down reason callback

The driver has a good intimate information of his device
implementation, and hence an analysis done by the device vendor is
favorable.

For a firmware based NIC, maybe. For a discrete NIC, making use of all
the Linux subsystems, this is going to be hard from within the kernel.

The driver provider can perform the analysis inside the device (firmware) or in the driver according to his preferences.
We believe that since devices are becoming smarter, more analysis will be done by the device itself, which has more
information and faster access.
Smart NICs/SoCs are very popular this days and this API takes into account the different architectures.

Since this callback is optional, a user space analysis tool can be added in the future providing more generic analysis approach for
unsupported devices.

I still fear this is going to be an ethtool call with only one user.

  Andrew