On Sat, 3 Oct 2026, Stephen Hemminger wrote: > If you want something done better it must done at ethdev layer > and you must coordinate across all existing devices.
Thanks, understood. I withdraw this series. The problem behind it: a firewall starts its ports at boot but must keep the ports that are disabled in its configuration down, so that the link partner never sees them. Today rte_eth_dev_start() brings the link up on most drivers, and the application can only bring it down afterwards. Would an RFC along these lines be acceptable? - ethdev keeps the administrative link state (RFC 2863 ifAdminStatus) set by rte_eth_dev_set_link_down()/up(), including before the port is started; - rte_eth_dev_start() honors it: drivers that support it keep the link down on start, and for the others ethdev calls dev_set_link_down() right after dev_start(), so the semantics are the same for all devices; - a new feature in the features matrix to track driver support. Or would you prefer a separate API for the administrative state instead of changing the behavior of rte_eth_dev_set_link_down()? Roman
