Bug 51851

Summary:	[TRIVIAL]Unable to use alx driver without CONFIG_MDIO
Product:	Backports project	Reporter:	Oleksandr Natalenko (oleksandr)
Component:	Backports	Assignee:	Backports Project Mailing List (backports)
Status:	CLOSED WILL_NOT_FIX
Severity:	normal	CC:	alan, feiticeir0, hauke, mricon, norman.shulman, zhchun.bei
Priority:	P1
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Kernel Version:	3.7.1	Subsystem:
Regression:	No	Bisected commit-id:

Description Oleksandr Natalenko 2012-12-20 09:25:00 UTC

I use own customized kernel in which I've disabled all unnecessary ethernet drivers. The fact is that new alx driver from 2012-12-19 tree depends on CONFIG_MDIO, and if I do not select in-kernel driver that depends on it (e.g., some broadcom or so), inserting compiled alx module gives me this:

===
[   44.248978] alx: Unknown symbol mdio_mii_ioctl (err 0)
===

I've got this fixed by adding into drivers/net/ethernet/atheros/Kconfig of my kernel tree "select MDIO" for Atheros drivers without selecting any other drivers.

Probably, it's possible to get it fixed in compat-drivers tree?

Comment 1 Bruno Santos 2013-04-09 11:24:05 UTC

compat-drivers-3.8.3-2-snpu with kernel-3.8.3-ck on Gentoo Linux still not working - the same error applies !

And I'm still not able to load the module - always the same error

---

[ 2981.813060] alx: Unknown symbol mdio_mii_ioctl (err 0)

---

Comment 2 bei 2013-06-04 10:59:51 UTC

compat-drivers-3.9-rc4-2-su or compat-drivers-2013-03-28-5-u with kernel-3.9.4-gentoo on Gentoo Linux still not working.
alx: Unknown symbol mdio_mii_ioctl (err 0)

Comment 3 Norman Shulman 2013-07-11 22:53:50 UTC

Still a problem with

nshulman@nvshp:/usr/src/linux
$ uname -r
3.9.5-hardened

and backports-20130618

Comment 5 Hauke Mehrtens 2013-11-24 19:29:23 UTC

The ALX driver needs MDIO and we do not provide that in backports. When you do not use a normal distribution kernel with lots of modules activate you have to activate some dependencies in your kernel by yourself. Sadly CONFIG_MDIO is a hidden option so you have to build some other Ethernet driver which depends on that option.

We do ot want to fix this in backports.