Subject: [RFC PATCH net-next 0/2] net: remove the orphaned IBM eHEA driver

From: David Christensen <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 19 May 2026 17:43:50 -0500

The IBM eHEA (Ethernet Host Ethernet Adapter) driver has been orphaned
since April 2024 with no active maintainer stepping forward. This series
removes the driver and associated references from the kernel tree.

## Why now

The driver was marked as Orphan in commit 97ec32b583bb ("MAINTAINERS: eth:
mark IBM eHEA as an Orphan") on April 18, 2024, with approval from the
PowerPC maintainer. In the 13 months since, no maintainer has stepped
forward to take ownership.

The hardware was last supported on IBM POWER7 systems, which reached
end-of-support in December 2020. The driver has received no functional
updates since October 2022 (commit 0e7ce23a917a, "net: ehea: fix possible
memory leak in ehea_register_port()"). All subsequent changes have been
mechanical API migrations affecting the entire kernel tree.

A search of lore.kernel.org for "ehea" over the last 24 months reveals:
- Zero user reports of active deployment
- Zero objections to the orphan status
- Zero maintenance discussions beyond mechanical updates
- One tasklet-to-workqueue conversion patch (July 2024) as part of a
  tree-wide infrastructure modernization

## RFC rationale

This series is posted as RFC to give any remaining users the opportunity to
identify themselves before this is reposted as a non-RFC series for
inclusion in net-next. If you are using this hardware in production, please
respond to this thread within the next two weeks.

## Reversibility

The code is preserved in git history and can be restored if a maintainer
steps forward to take ownership. The driver was originally introduced in
commit 7a291083225a ("[PATCH] ehea: IBM eHEA Ethernet Device Driver") on
September 13, 2006.

## Testing

- Diff equivalence verified: the series produces identical tree state to
  the original single-commit removal
- checkpatch.pl --strict: clean on both patches
- Build test: Both patches build successfully on native ppc64le

## Patch breakdown

Patch 1/2: Remove the driver code, Kconfig/Makefile entries, and
           MAINTAINERS block (netdev tree, 7042 deletions)
Patch 2/2: Remove powerpc defconfig entry and obsolete comment in
           arch/powerpc/mm/mem.c (powerpc tree, 5 deletions)

David Christensen
  net: ethernet: ibm: remove the ehea driver
  powerpc: remove ehea driver references

 MAINTAINERS                                  |    5 -
 arch/powerpc/configs/ppc64_defconfig         |    1 -
 arch/powerpc/mm/mem.c                        |    4 -
 drivers/net/ethernet/ibm/Kconfig             |    9 -
 drivers/net/ethernet/ibm/Makefile            |    1 -
 drivers/net/ethernet/ibm/ehea/Makefile       |    7 -
 drivers/net/ethernet/ibm/ehea/ehea.h         |  477 ---
 drivers/net/ethernet/ibm/ehea/ehea_ethtool.c |  277 --
 drivers/net/ethernet/ibm/ehea/ehea_hw.h      |  253 --
 drivers/net/ethernet/ibm/ehea/ehea_main.c    | 3579 ------------------
 drivers/net/ethernet/ibm/ehea/ehea_phyp.c    |  612 ---
 drivers/net/ethernet/ibm/ehea/ehea_phyp.h    |  433 ---
 drivers/net/ethernet/ibm/ehea/ehea_qmr.c     |  999 -----
 drivers/net/ethernet/ibm/ehea/ehea_qmr.h     |  390 --
 14 files changed, 7047 deletions(-)
 delete mode 100644 drivers/net/ethernet/ibm/ehea/Makefile
 delete mode 100644 drivers/net/ethernet/ibm/ehea/ehea.h
 delete mode 100644 drivers/net/ethernet/ibm/ehea/ehea_ethtool.c
 delete mode 100644 drivers/net/ethernet/ibm/ehea/ehea_hw.h
 delete mode 100644 drivers/net/ethernet/ibm/ehea/ehea_main.c
 delete mode 100644 drivers/net/ethernet/ibm/ehea/ehea_phyp.c
 delete mode 100644 drivers/net/ethernet/ibm/ehea/ehea_phyp.h
 delete mode 100644 drivers/net/ethernet/ibm/ehea/ehea_qmr.c
 delete mode 100644 drivers/net/ethernet/ibm/ehea/ehea_qmr.h

-- 
2.47.3