Re: [PATCH net-next 1/2] net: phylink: explicitly configure in-band autoneg for PHYs that support it

Am 2021-02-12 18:23, schrieb Vladimir Oltean:

From: Vladimir Oltean <vladimir.oltean@nxp.com>

Currently Linux has no control over whether a MAC-to-PHY interface uses
in-band signaling or not, even though phylink has the
	managed = "in-band-status";
property which denotes that the MAC expects in-band signaling to be 
used.

The problem is really that if the in-band signaling is configurable in
both the PHY and the MAC, there is a risk that they are out of sync
unless phylink manages them both. Most if not all in-band autoneg state
machines follow IEEE 802.3 clause 37, which means that they will not
change the operating mode of the SERDES lane from control to data mode
unless in-band AN completed successfully. Therefore traffic will not
work.

It is particularly unpleasant that currently, we assume that PHYs which
have configurable in-band AN come pre-configured from a prior boot 
stage
such as U-Boot, because once the bootloader changes, all bets are off.

Fun fact, now it may be the other way around. If the bootloader doesn't
configure it and the PHY isn't reset by the hardware, it won't work in
the bootloader after a reboot ;)

Let's introduce a new PHY driver method for configuring in-band 
autoneg,
and make phylink be its first user. The main PHY library does not call
phy_config_inband_autoneg, because it does not know what to configure 
it
to. Presumably, non-phylink drivers can also call 
phy_config_inband_autoneg
individually.

If you disable aneg between MAC and PHY, what would be the actual speed
setting/duplex mode then? I guess it have to match the external speed?

I'm trying this on the AT8031. I've removed 'managed = 
"in-band-status";'
for the PHY. Confirmed that it won't work and then I've implemented your
new callback. That will disable the SGMII aneg (which is done via the
BMCR of fiber page if I'm not entirely mistaken); ethernet will then
work again. But only for gigabit. I presume because the speed setting
of the SGMII link is set to gigabit.

-michael