Re: Class device namespaces

[Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>]

On Sun, 26 Apr 2009 08:01:22 -0500, Matt Domsch wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 26, 2009 at 07:44:43AM -0500, Matt Domsch wrote:
> > On Sun, Apr 26, 2009 at 08:54:01AM +0200, Jean Delvare wrote:
> > > Matt, maybe you can help? Could you please point us to the source code
> > > of the dell firmware tool which relies on the dell_rbu driver?
> > 
> > There's a git tree at:
> >   http://linux.dell.com/git/?p=libsmbios.git
> > 
> > which you can get via rsync at:
> >   rsync -va rsync://linux.dell.com/git/libsmbios.git/
> > 
> > the application is dellBiosUpdate, and the source is at this point in
> > the tree:
> > 
> >   http://linux.dell.com/git/?p=libsmbios.git;a=blob;f=src/bin/dellBiosUpdate.cpp;h=b32e157b7ceb0be0d53eed4a4d171d24fe6456a7;hb=HEAD

OK, thanks for the pointers.

> I'll note there is a second implementation that uses dell_rbu, and
> that is included in each and every "Dell Update Package" (aka DUP)
> BIOS update posted on support.dell.com for every Dell PowerEdge server
> for the past several years.  Because the updater and they BIOS payload
> are packaged in the same package, a change which would require
> changing that updater will result in requiring Dell to spin and
> re-release hundreds of DUPs, which would not go over well...  Thank
> you for being careful not to change the interface capriciously - it
> could have a huge impact on us.

I'll be careful, but you have to admit that duplicating utility code
like this is poor engineering from Dell :( I don't want to think of the
mess it will be if you ever have to fix a critical bug in that code.

-- 
Jean Delvare