Re: [ofa-general] Re: [PATCH v4 14/14] QLogic VNIC: sysfs Documentation

Ramachandra K wrote:

On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 8:48 PM, Patrick McHardy [off-list ref] wrote:

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Amar Mudrankit wrote:

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+/sys/class/infiniband_qlgc_vnic/interfaces/<VNIC-interface-name>/
+
+       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?

If you are referring to IP address configuration etc, users can configure
the interfaces by setting up ifcfg files and the interfaces are automatically
configured when they are registered.

Maybe they can. It gets more complicated when daemons want to
bind to that device etc.

But that still leaves the main question, why is it not using
the standard way and simply keeps the carrier turned off until
the link is ready?