Re: Future of the axe driver?

On Sat, 28 Feb 2009, Andrew Thompson wrote:

> On Sat, Feb 28, 2009 at 07:40:02PM -0800, Luke Dean wrote:
>>
>> I've got a Netgear FA120 usb-to-ethernet device.  I don't use it
>> regularly, but it has saved the day on many occasions.
>>
>> I'm running FreeBSD 7.1 right now, not CURRENT, and this device is
>> supported by the axe driver.
>>
>> I've been trying to follow the news with CURRENT, and it sounds like axe
>> is being phased out for a couple of different reasons.  I saw posts about
>> how it doesn't fit with the way CURRENT wants to do locking or with the
>> new usb changes.  I browsed the CVS repository and saw that its code had
>> been moved into the attic this week.
>>
>> Has axe been phased out?  Will there be another driver to support my
>> device when I decide to move to FreeBSD 8?  Is there anything I can do to
>> help preserve support for this device?
>
> Im not sure what posts were saying it was going to be phased out but it
> isnt true and the hardware is very much supported. The driver now lives
> under a slighty different location of sys/dev/usb/net/if_axe.c
>
>
> Andrew
>

There were a series of posts by Robert Watson titled
"HEADS UP: IFF_NEEDSGIANT consumers to be disabled, removed"
The latest one I received was on Feb 16 to current_at_freebsd.org.

There's a very good chance that I'm not understanding what I'm reading,
but I interpreted it to mean that all network drivers that required GIANT
locking (axe among them) would be disabled in CURRENT starting March 1,
and removed entirely on April 1.

Thank you for confirming that I misunderstood this.