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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div style='border:none;border-left:solid blue 1.5pt;padding:0in 0in 0in 4.0pt'><div><div style='border:none;border-top:solid #B5C4DF 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in'><p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>From:</span></b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'> kernelnewbies-bounces@kernelnewbies.org [mailto:kernelnewbies-bounces@kernelnewbies.org] <b>On Behalf Of </b>bill<br><b>Sent:</b> Thursday, July 14, 2011 2:09 AM<br><b>To:</b> kernelnewbies<br><b>Subject:</b> Puzzled about MDIO issue<o:p></o:p></span></p></div></div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'>Hi, All<br><br>I've been reading MDIO code, tiny though but it still puzzled me for its usage.<br>MDIO is an hardware interface for the MAC to set/get PHY configuration/status.<br><br>Linux manipulates MDIO through:<br>struct net_device ->do_ioctl -> mdio_mii_ioctl -> mdio_read/mdio_write<br><br>Question:<br>A: Turn an NIC from cold state to running state, is this ioctl must be used to configure the PHY?<br> If so , how?<br><br>B: what's the usage of this net device ioctl?<br> I found an user-space package mii-tool create a socket first and then use the socket handle for ioctl<br> to query lots of PHY information.<br> Is there any other typical usage of it?<br><br><br>thanks<br>bill<br><br><span style='color:#1F497D'>mii-tool and the ioctls that go with it are long deprecated. These days they can be useful for debugging, but that’s about it.</span><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Modern Linux Ethernet drivers implement support for the ETHTOOL ioctls which are generated using the ethtool application. Usage of mii-tool and its ioctls with modern drivers is likely to cause you problems as mii-tool can put the PHY into a state that is out of sync with how the driver thinks it should be configured.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'>Jeff Haran<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:12.0pt'><span style='font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div></div><font face="monospace"></font></body></html>