Re: [PATCH] arm64: defconfig: Build STMMAC Ethernet driver into the kernel for NFS boot

[Jon Hunter <jonathanh@nvidia.com>]

Hi Geert,

On 23/05/2025 12:54, Krzysztof Kozlowski wrote:
> On 23/05/2025 13:39, Geert Uytterhoeven wrote:
>> On Tue, 6 May 2025 at 12:47, Prabhakar <prabhakar.csengg@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> From: Lad Prabhakar <prabhakar.mahadev-lad.rj@bp.renesas.com>
>>>
>>> Enable `CONFIG_STMMAC_ETH` as built-in (`y`) instead of a module (`m`) to
>>> ensure the Ethernet driver is available early in the boot process. This
>>> is necessary for platforms mounting the root filesystem via NFS, as the
>>> driver must be available before the root filesystem is accessed.
>>>
>>> Signed-off-by: Lad Prabhakar <prabhakar.mahadev-lad.rj@bp.renesas.com>
>>> ---
>>> With this change, the Renesas RZ/V2H EVK board can boot from NFS
>>> which has the DWMAC IP.
>>
>> Reviewed-by: Geert Uytterhoeven <geert+renesas@glider.be>
>> i.e. will queue in renesas-devel for v6.17.
> 
> With my Nacked, please.


I was surprised to see this change in -next. We also use NFS for testing 
and we use the dwmac drivers. To date we are explictly building these 
drivers into the initramfs but I noticed that that is now failing 
because this driver is no longer a module by default. This is easy for 
us to fix.

I do agree that if we start to build every networking driver into the 
kernel it is going to bloat. Yes I do see the kernel image growing 
regardless of this, but nonetheless it seems better to just build as a 
module IMO.

Jon

-- 
nvpublic