On Wed, 2008-02-13 at 11:22 -0500, James Smart wrote:

James Bottomley wrote:

quoted

I don't disagree with that, but the fact is that there isn't such a
tool.   It's also a fact that the enterprise is reasonably unhappy with
the lack of an enclosure management infrastructure, since it's something
they got on all the other unix systems.

I don't disagree.

quoted

I think a minimal infrastructure in-kernel does just about everything
the enterprise wants ... and since it's stateless, they can always use
direct connect tools in addition.

However, I'm happy to be proven wrong ... anyone on this thread is
welcome to come up with a userland enclosure infrastructure.  Once it
does everything the in-kernel one does (which is really about the
minimal possible set), I'll be glad to erase the in-kernel one.

yeah, but...  putting something new in, only to pull it later, is a bad
paradigm for adding new mgmt interfaces. Believe me, I've felt users pain in
the reverse flow : driver-specific stuff that then has to migrate to upstream
interfaces, complicated by different pull points by different distros. You can
migrate a management interface, but can you really remove/pull one out ?

That depends on the result.  I agree that migration will be a pain, so I
suppose I set the bar a bit low; the user tool needs to be a bit more
compelling; plus I'll manage the interface transition ... if there is
one; there's no such tool yet.

Isn't it better to let the lack of an interface give motivation to create
the "right" interface, once the "right way" is determined - which is what I
thought we were discussing ?    or is this simply that there is no motivation
until something exists, that people don't like, thus they become motivated ?

Well ... I did learn the latter from Andrew, so I thought I'd try it.
It's certainly true that the enclosure problem has been an issue for
over a decade, so there doesn't seem to be anything motivating anyone to
solve it.  I wouldn't have bothered except that I could see ad-hoc
in-kernel sysfs solutions beginning to appear.  At least this way they
can all present a unified interface.

James