Re: [PATCH net-next] Documentation: networking: Add a test plan for ethtool pause validation
From: Andrew Lunn <andrew@lunn.ch>
Date: 2026-05-29 12:59:38
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I think that ethtool -s <iface> duplex half autoneg on should be enough, the link should still establish at 100M, I've tested that on a 1G/FULL 100MHalf+Full interface and this is the result we get :)
Nice. But i still think the test should check the autoneg result and do something sensible if the link does not come up. This probably applies to all cases where we trigger auto neg.
That said I've tested the following on mcbin, and it seems that acually nothing in the code currently deals with Half duplex / Pause interaction, and we don't get any EOPNOTSUPP. So the broader question is, should we reflect the current behaviour or an ideal one ?
What 802.3 says. If we come across cases where phylib/phylink is broken, let me know, and i will fix it. But we will leave driver bugs to individual driver developers. But we also need to consider that for some APIs, we have decided that a configuration can be set now, which does not actually apply in our current conditions, but it will be stored away for when conditions change and it is applicable. The half duplex case could fit that. When the link is currently half duplex, you can configure pause, but you don't expect it to actually change the current behaviour. It only kicks in when the link renegotiates to full duplex sometime in the future. We have to also consider this the other way around. The link is full duplex and pause is configured by the user. Something happens with the LP and the link renegotiates to half duplex. The local end should not throw away the configuration, it simply cannot apply it given the current situation. Andrew