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

Greg KH
2006-01-03T17:54:25Z

On Fri, Dec 30, 2005 at 05:40:50PM -0800, Bryan O'Sullivan wrote:
> On Fri, 2005-12-30 at 16:10 -0800, Greg KH wrote:
>
> > But we (the kernel community), don't really accept that as a valid
> > reason to accept this kind of code, sorry.
>
> Fair enough. I'd like some guidance in that case. Some of our ioctls
> access the hardware more or less directly, while others do things like
> read or reset counters.
>
> Which of these kinds of operations are appropriate to retain as ioctls,
> in your eyes, and which are best converted to sysfs or configfs
> alternatives?

Idealy, nothing should be new ioctls. But in the end, it all depends on
exactly what you are trying to do with each different one.

> As an example, take a look at ipath_sma_ioctl. It seems to me that
> receiving or sending subnet management packets ought to remain as
> ioctls, while getting port or node data could be turned into sysfs
> attributes. Lane identification could live in configfs. If you think
> otherwise, please let me know what's more appropriate.

I really don't know what the subnet management stuff involves, sorry.
But doesn't the open-ib layer handle that all for you already?

thanks,

greg k-h