Subject: Re: [PATCH] [POWERPC][RFC] MPC8360E-RDK: Device tree and board file

From: Scott Wood <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2007 12:48:17 -0600

Vitaly Bordug wrote:
> On Mon, 17 Dec 2007 11:03:04 -0600 Scott Wood wrote:
>>> These phy nodes have basically no information in them.  PHY nodes
>>>  are optional -
>> If they are truly optional, then several Linux drivers (including 
>> ucc_geth, which this board uses) are broken, as they'll error out
>> if there's no phy-handle (gianfar is even worse -- it looks like
>> the fsl_soc code will crash in that case).  But what do you propose
>> they do in the absence of a phy-handle?  Hope that probing only
>> finds one phy?
> 
> up-to-date fixed phy patch solves it in gianfar and fs_enet case. it
> is implied, that either there *are* phy nodes (and the code will look
> up their reg and phandle) or there should be fixed-link property in
> NIC node, that describes to what link stuff is really connected.

There's a difference between the phy *node* being optional and phy 
*usage* being optional. :-)

-Scott