[PATCH net] ax88179_178a: fix bonding failure

[Ian Morgan]

The following patch fixes a bug which causes the ax88179_178a driver to be
incapable of being added to a bond.

When I brought up the issue with the bonding maintainers, they indicated
that the real problem was with the NIC driver which must return zero for
success (of setting the MAC address). I see that several other NIC drivers
follow that pattern by either simply always returing zero, or by passing
through a negative (error) result while rewriting any positive return code
to zero. With that same philisophy applied to the ax88179_178a driver, it
allows it to work correctly with the bonding driver.

I believe this is suitable for queuing in -stable, as it's a small, simple,
and obvious fix that corrects a defect with no other known workaround.

This patch is against vanilla 3.17(.0).

Signed-off-by: Ian Morgan <***@primordial.ca>

drivers/net/usb/ax88179_178a.c | 7 ++++++-
1 file changed, 6 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

--- linux-3.17/drivers/net/usb/ax88179_178a.c.orig 2014-10-05 15:23:04.000000000 -0400
+++ linux-3.17/drivers/net/usb/ax88179_178a.c 2014-10-15 09:07:31.217810217 -0400
@@ -937,6 +937,7 @@ static int ax88179_set_mac_addr(struct n
{
struct usbnet *dev = netdev_priv(net);
struct sockaddr *addr = p;
+ int ret;

if (netif_running(net))
return -EBUSY;
@@ -946,8 +947,12 @@ static int ax88179_set_mac_addr(struct n
memcpy(net->dev_addr, addr->sa_data, ETH_ALEN);

/* Set the MAC address */
- return ax88179_write_cmd(dev, AX_ACCESS_MAC, AX_NODE_ID, ETH_ALEN,
+ ret = ax88179_write_cmd(dev, AX_ACCESS_MAC, AX_NODE_ID, ETH_ALEN,
ETH_ALEN, net->dev_addr);
+ if (ret < 0)
+ return ret;
+
+ return 0;
}

static const struct net_device_ops ax88179_netdev_ops = {

[David Miller]

From: Ian Morgan <***@primordial.ca>
Date: Sun, 19 Oct 2014 08:05:13 -0400 (EDT)

Post by Ian Morgan
The following patch fixes a bug which causes the ax88179_178a driver to be
incapable of being added to a bond.
When I brought up the issue with the bonding maintainers, they indicated
that the real problem was with the NIC driver which must return zero for
success (of setting the MAC address). I see that several other NIC drivers
follow that pattern by either simply always returing zero, or by passing
through a negative (error) result while rewriting any positive return code
to zero. With that same philisophy applied to the ax88179_178a driver, it
allows it to work correctly with the bonding driver.
I believe this is suitable for queuing in -stable, as it's a small, simple,
and obvious fix that corrects a defect with no other known workaround.
This patch is against vanilla 3.17(.0).

Applied and queued up for -stable, thanks.