From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Patrick McHardy Subject: Re: [ofa-general] Re: [PATCH v4 14/14] QLogic VNIC: sysfs Documentation Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2008 17:18:38 +0200 Message-ID: <48513E4E.4040601@trash.net> References: <20080610205633.11186.45499.stgit@dale> <20080610210918.11186.64253.stgit@dale> <484F751F.7030407@trash.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Ramachandra K , netdev@vger.kernel.org, rdreier@cisco.com, general@lists.openfabrics.org, poornima.kamath@qlogic.com To: Amar Mudrankit Return-path: Received: from stinky.trash.net ([213.144.137.162]:42673 "EHLO stinky.trash.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750699AbYFLPSm (ORCPT ); Thu, 12 Jun 2008 11:18:42 -0400 In-Reply-To: Sender: netdev-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: Amar Mudrankit wrote: >>> +/sys/class/infiniband_qlgc_vnic/interfaces// >>> + >>> + vnic_state (0444) State of the VNIC interface. >> This I don't understand - you seem to be registering and >> unregistering the net_device based some state machine, >> in some cases even triggered by timers. >> >> Whats the idea behind this? > > For a given VNIC interface, unless the VNIC host driver establishes a > connection with EVIC > and completes the control and data path communication sequence with > the EVIC, the > VNIC network device is not registered on the host. Establishing a > connection with EVIC > and going through the control and data path communication involves > multiple packet > exchange on the IB side with the EVIC and can take some time. The > netpath statemachine is, hence, meant to PERIODICALLY check if > connection is fully established with EVIC or not. > Once connection is established, it takes care to register the VNIC netdevice. We have linkstate/operstate for this. How is a user supposed to configure the network device when it appears at a more or less random time from his perspective?