Re: [RFC 02/10] IB/hfi-vnic: Virtual Network Interface Controller (VNIC) Bus driver

On Mon, Nov 21, 2016 at 03:26:29PM -0800, Vishwanathapura, Niranjana wrote:
 

I did not see any example IB mad agent outside drivers/inifiniband
folder.

You can be the first.

I did see some netdev drivers outside the net/ folder (like ipoib and
drivers/infiniband/hw/nes/).

It is very rare, and arguably ipoib was a mistake..

The hfi_vnic Ethernet driver is entirely a soft driver without any HW access.
Also, any interface changes between hfi_vnic and the HFI driver makes it
difficult to manage if they are under two subsystems/maintainers.

We manage this already for all the rocee drivers that are based on
netdev drivers, you will be fine.

We have 'rdmavt' and 'soft-roce' drivers under drivers/infiniband/sw/ folder
which are soft drivers similar to hfi_vnic. So we decided to put
'hif_vnic'

As I said those are HCA drivers & support, not just random 'software'.

quoted

quoted

quoted

quoted

+	ida_init(&hfi_vnic_ctrl_ida);
+	idr_init(&hfi_vnic_idr);
+
+	rc = bus_register(&hfi_vnic_bus);

Why on earth do we need this? Didn't I give you enough grief for the
psm stuff and now you want to create an entire subystem hidden away!?

Use some netlink scheme to control your vnic like the rest of the net
stack..

The hfi_vnic_bus is only abstracting the HW independent functionality (like
Ethernet interface, encapsulation, IB MAD interface etc) with the HW
dependent functionality (sending/receiving packets on the wire).
Thus providing a cleaner interface between HW independent hfi_vnic Ethernet
and Control drivers and the HW dependent HFI1 driver.

That doesn't explain anything, sound like you don't need it so get rid
of it.

quoted

quoted

There is no other User interface here other than the standard Ethernet
interface through network stack.

Good, then this isn't needed, because it doesn't provide a user interface.

Can you explain what exactly you are asking to get rid of here and why?

Get rid of the bus_register/etc as drivers do not get to call this.

Jason
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-rdma" in
the body of a message to majordomo-u79uwXL29TY76Z2rM5mHXA@public.gmane.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html