how to identify a PHY?

[Bruce M. Simpson]

Volker wrote:
> ...
> In short my original question better reads as "how do I know the kind of
> phy if no driver has been attached". Can one retrieve that information
> out of a verbose boot dmesg (from probing messages)?
>   

You can't determine which PHY is in use unless a driver is attached, 
because it's necessary to attach a driver in order to access the card's 
MII registers. Same with any other OS.

If no PHY driver attached, but a NIC driver attached, you should see 
this message:
    device_printf(dev, "MII without any PHY!\n");

It sounds like someone needs to instrument the code path mii_phy_probe() 
to print useful information in the situation you describe.

cheers
BMS