Re: [PATCH 0/5][RFC] Physical PCI slot objects

[Rick Jones <rick.jones2@hp.com>]

Greg KH wrote:
> Doesn't /sys/firmware/acpi give you raw access to the correct tables
> already?
> 
> And isn't there some other tool that dumps the raw ACPI tables?  I
> thought the acpi developers used it all the time when debugging things
> with users.

I'm neither an acpi developer (well I don't think that I am :) nor an
end-user, but here are the two things for which I was going to use the
information being presented by Alex's patch:

1) a not-yet, but on track to be released tool to be used by end-users
to diagnose I/O bottlenecks - the information in
/sys/bus/pci/slot/<foo>/address would be used to associated interfaces
and/or pci busses etc with something the end user would grok - the
number next to the slot.

2) I was also going to get the folks doing installers to make use of the
"end-user" slot ID. Even without going to the extreme of the
aforementioned 192 slot system, an 8 slot system with a bunch of
dual-port NICs in it (for example) is going to present this huge list of
otherwise identical entries. Even if the installers show the MAC for a
NIC (or I guess a WWN for an HBA or whatnot) that still doesn't tell one
without prior knowledge of what MACs were installed in which slot, which
slot is associated with a given ethN. Having the end-user slot ID
visible is then going to be a great help to that poor admin who is doing
the install.

rick jones