Bogus EEPROM checksum and now?

[Stefan Bader]

Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 25, 2010 at 11:31:07AM -0800, Stefan Bader wrote:
>> Stefan Bader wrote:
>>> Hi Luis,
>>>
>>> ok this was somewhat to be expected when adding the patch to check for the
>>> EEPROM checksum to stable[1]. The question is, is the a workable way to get that
>>> fixed on the adapter or would it not have been better to have at least an option
>>> to allow users to override it with the message that they cannot submit any
>>> bugreports that get listened to?
>> Note: I overlooked that this specific case was already fixed by a later patch
>> that did not get into 2.6.31.y.
> 
> Indeed, also AFAICT I did not push the EEPROM checksum into 2.6.31, was that
> a patch you cherry picked in to 2.6.31 for Ubuntu?

I picked commit 359207c687cc8f4f9845c8dadd0d6dabad44e584
Author: Luis R. Rodriguez <lrodriguez at atheros.com>
Date:   Mon Jan 4 10:40:39 2010 -0500

    ath5k: Fix eeprom checksum check for custom sized eeproms

which was mentioned in the bug report and also seems to be the only ath5k patch
between adding the checksum code and HEAD that seems to be related. If I missed
another one, please tell.


>> Still generically it would be interesting what
>> would be the approach if there is someone approaching with a invalid checksum.
> 
> Just tell them their card is busted. There was indeed a bug in the checksum
> computation, and I fixed that.
> 
>> Are the EEPROMs to your knowledge simply be upgradeable by vendors (if they
>> care) or would you think an override acceptable?
> 
> They are programmed once, that's it. Its done by the ODMs based on samplying
> of a card out of a group. The checksum shall never fail, the other OS drivers
> also use this same checksum.

Thanks a lot for the explanations. Its good to know that.

>   Luis