[elrepo] Interest in kmod package for lan78xx?

[Phil Perry]

On 30/05/17 21:53, Björn Gerhart wrote:
> 
>> On 30/05/17 14:20, Björn Gerhart wrote:
>>> Hi folks,
>>> I need to support the USB LAN chip adapter LAN7850 by Microchip. This NIC model already is integrated in later versions of kernel module lan78xx. Yet, it is not part of the el7 kernel package.
>>> Apparently, support with elrepo's kernel 4.4 package is given.
>>> However, I would kindly ask if someone else also is interested in a kmod package containing the lan78xx module. Yet, I don't know anything about the backport efforts this would mean for el7 (and maybe for el6 also later on).
>>> What are your thoughts on that?
>>> This is the chip's concrete data:
>>> LAN7850, Vendor ID 0x0424, Product ID 0x7850
>>> Thanks and best - Björn
>>
>> Hi Björn,
>>
>> I will look at this for you.
>>
>> As you state, kernel-4.4 appears to be the first longterm kernel that supported this device, so we will need to see if we can backport the driver from this kernel. It looks like the driver also depends on the microchip PHY which we will also need to backport as this didn't exist in RHEL7's 3.10 kernel.
>>
>> I will start by trying to backport the driver for RHEL7.
>>
>> In the meantime, Alan's kernel-lt-4.4 and kernel-ml (currently 4.11) packages should support this device on RHEL7.
>>
>> I'll report back here once I have some news. I assume you have the hardware available to test a kmod driver package for RHEL7?
> 
> Hi Phil, thanks so much for investigating that! Yes, I have the hardware available and would give feedback about the tests.
> Best - Björn
> 
> 

Hi Björn,

I have a driver package for you to test in the elrepo testing repository:

http://elrepo.org/linux/testing/el7/x86_64/RPMS/kmod-lan78xx-1.0.4-1.el7.elrepo.x86_64.rpm

I've just uploaded the package so it should show up shortly after 
syncing to the mirrors.

If you could please test and let me know how you get on. To install:

yum --enablerepo=elrepo-testing install kmod-lan78xx

then reboot.

The package provides 2 modules, lan78xx.ko and microchip.ko. I'm not 
sure if microchip.ko needs to be loaded or will get loaded automatically 
as it doesn't appear to show as a module dependency for lan78xx. So keep 
an eye what's happening with lsmod / dmesg and load it if you think it's 
required.

The driver is based on a patchset[1] by Microcode provided for kernel-3.10.

Phil

[1] http://www.microchip.com/wwwproducts/en/LAN7800