Puzzled about MDIO issue

[bill]

Hi, All

I've been reading MDIO code, tiny though but it still puzzled me for its usage.
MDIO is an hardware interface for the MAC to set/get PHY configuration/status.

Linux manipulates MDIO through:
struct net_device ->do_ioctl -> mdio_mii_ioctl -> mdio_read/mdio_write

Question:
A: Turn an NIC from cold state to running state, is this ioctl must be used to configure the PHY?
     If so , how?

B: what's the usage of this net device ioctl?
    I found an user-space package  mii-tool create a socket first and then use the socket handle for ioctl
    to query lots of PHY information.
    Is there any other typical usage of  it?


thanks
bill














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