John Hawkinson wrote:

> I'd like to allow ether_ifattach() to fail (and return failure).

> Careful examination of a bunch of drivers shows that they don't deal
> very well with the case of *_attach() failing.

I would like to see a change in the config machinery so that *_attach()
can fail, which would then stop the device from being accessible.
As it is each driver (where attach can fail) needs to have a flag indicating
if it is really working.  Ideally, an attach should never fail, but unfortunately
that's now how the world works.  A device can stop working at any time,
even during attach.

My proposed change is rather large.  Each device driver needs to be modified,
but in a very simple way.  Just change the return type to `int' and add a `return 0'.


--

        -- Lennart