Tushar,

Thanks for running this down.  So that means that the current driver
implementation would never allow a NIC which has a BMC sideband
connection physically to ever power off the PHY.

That doesn't seem like the right approach.  I realize that it would be
difficult to convey whether an IPMI session is active or not and it may
not be desirable to power down the PHY if there could be incoming IPMI
management traffic, but there should be a way to detect if the IPMI
configuration has the channel enabled or not.  If IPMI LAN is not
enabled, the PHY can safely be powered down.  

Obviously it would be simple to ignore these bits in the driver to get
it to work, but that's not optimal.  

If the BMC is asserting these bits without regard to the configuration
of the IPMI LAN channels, perhaps that is where the bug could be
pursued, to fix the firmware?  Or should the driver use another
mechanism to discern whether IPMI LAN is enabled or not (KCS, ...)?

Andy

-----Original Message-----
From: Dave, Tushar N [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: Tuesday, August 23, 2011 5:07 PM
To: Andy Cress; [email protected]
Subject: RE: e1000e check_mng_mode issue

Andy,
These bits gets set by internal BMC firmware when the code is
initialized.  It does not depend on whether there is currently an active
IPMI session. 

-Tushar

-----Original Message-----
From: Andy Cress [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: Friday, August 12, 2011 2:30 PM
To: Dave, Tushar N; [email protected]
Subject: RE: e1000e check_mng_mode issue

Tushar,

But if 'management mode' means that IPMI LAN is enabled or in use, then
this indication is yielding a false result, because IPMI LAN is
disabled.  Those bits are always set regardless of the state of the IPMI
LAN configuration. 

So what drives those bits?   Does the IPMI firmware drive them, or do
they depend on the NIC firmware, or ...?  

Andy

-----Original Message-----
From: Dave, Tushar N [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: Friday, August 12, 2011 4:58 PM
To: Andy Cress; [email protected]
Subject: RE: e1000e check_mng_mode issue

Andy,

The define constant name (i.e. E1000_MNG_IAMT_MODE) is little confusing.
The objective of e1000_check_mng_mode_generic() is to check if
Management is enabled or not. It doesn't care about what MNG mode is
enabled(e.g AMT or IPMI).

If Management is enabled then FMSW (bit 3:1) should have value 0x3 (This
value is loaded from EEPROM word 13h). 
So all e1000_check_mng_mode_generic() does is check if the FMSW's bit
3:1 is equivalent to value 0x3.

Let me know if you have any more queries.

-Tushar


-----Original Message-----
From: Andy Cress [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: Friday, August 12, 2011 1:23 PM
To: Dave, Tushar N; [email protected]
Subject: RE: e1000e check_mng_mode issue

Tushar,

Right, my eth0 is 80003ES2LAN.   
Attached is the 'ethtool -e eth0' output (eth0.e).

Andy
-----Original Message-----
From: Dave, Tushar N [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Friday, August 12, 2011 12:48 PM
To: Andy Cress; [email protected]
Subject: RE: e1000e check_mng_mode issue

Andy,
Thanks for your patience. I am looking into this.
(assuming your eth0 device is 80003ES2LAN) Can you provide 'ethtool -e
eth0' output?

-Tushar


-----Original Message-----
From: Andy Cress [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Tuesday, August 09, 2011 2:21 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [E1000-devel] e1000e check_mng_mode issue


This may apply to other NICs with an IPMI BMC instead of AMT, but here's
my configuration:
Baseboard: Intel S5000PAL
Onboard NICs (2): 80003ES2LAN
And this has an IPMI BMC on the baseboard with sideband connections to
the onboard NICs.

# ethtool -I eth0
driver: e1000e
version: 1.0.2.5-NAPI
firmware-version: 1.0-0
bus-info: 0000:07:00.0

For the e1000e driver, the 80003ES2LAN uses the
e1000_check_mng_mode_generic() routine in manage.c.  It seems to always
return 0x18006 from the firmware semaphore register, regardless of
whether or not the firmware has any IPMI LAN channels enabled or not.
This routine is the same in the latest stable e1000e-1.4.4.tar.gz.  

The code indicates that it is checking for E1000_MNG_IAMT_MODE (3 << 1),
and the 0x06 part is always set.  Does this mean that the firmware
semaphore register bits that are checked apply to Intel AMT, but not to
IPMI?  

Should there be a different routine for IPMI (non-AMT) management
systems?

Andy


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