Subject: Re: [RFC] let mortals use ethtool

From: "Michael Chan" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2006 13:39:18 -0700

On Thu, 2006-09-28 at 16:35 -0400, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> James Morris wrote:
> > On Thu, 28 Sep 2006, Michael Chan wrote:
> > 
> >> I'm against letting normal users do ETHTOOL_GREGS and ETHTOOL_PHYS_ID.
> >> Dumping 64K worth of registers and blinking the LEDs should be
> >> restricted.
> > 
> > Out of curiosity -- why?
> 
> In the past, dumping certain tg3 registers has led to lock-ups, for one.
> 
> Also, blindly dumping registers can negatively affect driver operation, 
> for the case where reading registers has side effects, such as PHY 
> register bit shifting, or read-and-clear registers.
> 

That's right.  For the LED blinking part, you don't want normal users to
override the normal functions of LEDs which are to indicate link, speed,
traffic, etc.