Subject: SIOCGIFMAP silently broken?

From: Martin Wilck <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2005 15:57:09 +0100

Hi,

we are using a server management software that uses the irq information
returned by the SIOCGIFMAP ioctl to correlate network interfaces with
LAN hardware.

The code for SIOCGIFMAP if net/core/dev.c simply returns netdev->irq 
which isn't set by most actual LAN drivers any more, and it seems to
be common opinion that setting netdev->irq is either optional or even 
wrong (http://www.ussg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0407.3/1292.html).

Consequently, the SIOCGIFMAP ioctl reports bogus IRQ values for most 
hardware; it is therefore unreliable.

Would it be possible to fix the ioctl such that it returns the correct 
irq value, e.g. be using the irq field of the associated struct pci_dev?

If not, I'd consider it better to deprecate netdev->irq officially and 
always return bogus so that people stop using it.

In both cases, the netdev->irq field isn't used anymore; perhaps it 
should be officially deprecated and/or removed?

Regards
Martin

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