Re: [PATCH 3/3 net-next] tg3: Add sysfs file to export sensor data

On Fri, 2012-06-22 at 18:04 -0700, Michael Chan wrote:

On Fri, 2012-06-22 at 17:26 -0700, David Miller wrote: 

quoted

From: "Michael Chan" <mchan@broadcom.com>
Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2012 17:06:32 -0700

quoted

Some tg3 devices have management firmware that can export data such as
temperature and other real time diagnostics data.  Export this data to
sysfs so that userspace can access this information.

Signed-off-by: Matt Carlson <redacted>
Signed-off-by: Nithin Nayak Sujir <redacted>
Signed-off-by: Michael Chan <mchan@broadcom.com>

I do not agree that sysfs is the appropriate place to export binary
data.

What's your suggestion?  ethtool?

Temperature and voltage can be exposed through an hwmon device (which
practically means you use multiple attributes with conventional names).
Other diagnostics might possible be suitable for ethtool stats,
depending on what they are.

If the driver can't easily parse the information (e.g. it varies greatly
between the different chips and firmware versions) then a binary
attribute or private ioctl might be appropriate.  But generic interfaces
really should be considered first.

Ben.

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