Re: [PATCH v2 -next 4/4] tg3: Add binary sysfs file to export bulk sensor data

[David Miller <davem@davemloft.net>]

From: "Michael Chan" <mchan@broadcom.com>
Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2012 22:00:49 -0700

> On Tue, 2012-06-26 at 21:02 -0700, David Miller wrote:
>> Ben stated merely that a binary attribute existed for sysfs files.  He
>> did not, however, say that this is the path down which you should
>> implement your feature.
> 
> He said that if the data was difficult to parse in the driver, then a
> binary sysfs or private ioctl (which we would stay away) would be
> appropriate.  There are hundreds of bytes of this data, most of which is
> not useful to the user but needed for Lights out management.  It will
> greatly bloat the tg3 driver to add code to parse all that data and
> export each one separately.

I don't want us to get into the habit of just going "oh it's LOM
stuff, binary blob."  And that's the precedence you're setting here.

It also sets up a situation where functionality could end up only
being available in proprietary binary only tools.

It's not like this is some standardized format like a DMI table or
similar, is it?