[openib-general] [PATCH]proposal for enabling partial ports on HCA

[Shirley Ma]

The port failure means the SW clients initilization of that port failure. 
Doesn't matter whether the link is up/down or the hardware/firmare 
problem. If encountering any of the SW errors, the upper users can't use 
that port correctly, or even the whole device correctly. It's easily to 
prove that if you set error points during client registration and start 
the upper users. The problems could be kernel hung, kernel oops. For 
example, if mad_client initilization ports failure and you start 
ipoib_client. ifconfig will hung in kernel. If sa_client failure, the 
ipoib multicast join will hit kernel oops. Staring the upper users without 
checking the depency resouce allocation is buggy. It is  definitely worth 
to spend time to address this. 

And the complication is only added to the client registration. The ports 
info are stored in ib_device, ib_cache, ib_sa_device, cm_device, it's not 
hard to fix it.

Thanks
Shirley Ma
IBM Linux Technology Center
15300 SW Koll Parkway
Beaverton, OR 97006-6063
Phone(Fax): (503) 578-7638
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