Comment 17 for bug 1219256

commit db6b5bf758051d320b6b3363ddd515760010e527
Author: Felix Fietkau <email address hidden>
Date: Tue Nov 12 16:34:41 2013 +0100

    usbnet: fix status interrupt urb handling

    [ Upstream commit 52f48d0d9aaa621ffa5e08d79da99a3f8c93b848 ]

    Since commit 7b0c5f21f348a66de495868b8df0284e8dfd6bbf
    "sierra_net: keep status interrupt URB active", sierra_net triggers
    status interrupt polling before the net_device is opened (in order to
    properly receive the sync message response).

    To be able to receive further interrupts, the interrupt urb needs to be
    re-submitted, so this patch removes the bogus check for netif_running().

...

https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.x/ChangeLog-3.12.4