Re: [PATCH net v2] net: spacemit: Clarify stat timeout comments and messages

[Vivian Wang <wangruikang@iscas.ac.cn>]

On 1/22/26 12:04, Jakub Kicinski wrote:
> On Wed, 21 Jan 2026 10:17:18 +0800 Vivian Wang wrote:
>> This patch isn't a fix for the problem per se, since it is hardware
>> behavior. The new message and comments, however, should direct those
>> running into this on new hardware towards a fix.
> Is it not possible to improve the situation?

Maybe I should have made it clearer, but this comment and messages
improvement was proposed by Andrew in the linked thread [1].

As an aside, saying that made me realize this patch should be:

Suggested-by: Andrew Lunn <andrew@lunn.ch>

> Is the refclock disappearing because of power saving?
> Or because the link is down?

I'm not really well-versed in what's allowed from the PHY here, but at
least the Motorcomm and Realtek PHYs seem to only stop this clock while
the link is down. So from what I can tell it's PHY stopping the clock
because of power saving for when the link is down. I'm not sure how that
should translate into an answer to your question here...

> Because if it's the latter we should be able to skip reading the stats
> when link is down (still racy but better than waiting in cases we can
> detect?)

If checking the link is definitely up as a condition for updating stats
would be acceptable, then maybe the original patch from the linked
thread [2] can also be adopted?

Vivian "dramforever" Wang

[1]: https://lore.kernel.org/r/48757af2-bbea-4185-8cc9-2ef51dbc8373@lunn.ch/
[2]: https://lore.kernel.org/r/20260118100000.224793-1-amadeus@jmu.edu.cn/