Re: [PATCH 0 of 20] [RFC] ipath - PathScale InfiniPath driver

Bryan O'Sullivan
2006-01-03T21:26:05Z

On Tue, 2006-01-03 at 21:57 +0100, Arjan van de Ven wrote:

> that sounds like your driver should mimic the openIB userspace ABI for
> this *exactly* so that you can use the same management tools for either
> scenario...

The OpenIB userspace ABI is huge and complex, and the OpenIB subnet
management agent (OpenSM) is even more so. Our low-level subnet
management agent has vastly simpler needs, so it really is better served
with 300 lines of specialised code (I don't care what the ABI actually
is) than 15,000 lines introduced for the sake of unneeded compatibility.

Perhaps read/write on the character device file would be preferable to
ioctls for sending and receiving these management packets? We don't
implement those file methods at the moment, so it's not like we'd be
displacing anything.

<b