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<p class=MsoNormal>Hi folks,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>I tried loading the IB drivers on LHS (Windows Server code
name “Longhorn”) and it doesn’t work. I tracked the
problem down to the fact that the driver packages are now staged to a special
system folder before being installed. The IB co-installer uses the path
of the binaries to find the drivers for the “InfiniBand Fabric”
device, but since these didn’t get staged with the HCA drivers, it fails
and with it installation of the HCA drivers fails.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>I can’t come up with a really good solution to this,
so wanted to start a discussion for how this should be addressed.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>Solution 1: Don’t fail the HCA driver installation if
the co-installer can’t install the IB Bus device.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>While this allows the HCA drivers to install, it doesn’t
install the IB Bus, which means no user-mode app will work (no IBAL device for
it to open), and no IPoIB or other child devices (no bus driver) will be
reported to the system. A manual installation of the drivers for the IB
bus driver is required to get things really running, so there’s no longer
an automatic installation path through the device manager. Things can be
scripted with devcon to work around this, though.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>Solution 2: Make ibbus an upper filter for the HCA, include
all its information in the HCA’s INF file.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>This solves the installation issue (and eliminates the
co-installer), and kernel clients will get created as needed, so it’s a
pretty nice solution (it actually simplifies the PnP notifications required of
HCA drivers). The problem is that it impacts user-mode apps.
Currently, a user-mode client can load before any HCA is available in the
system, and use the IBAL PnP notifications to detect arrival of an HCA.
If the IB bus driver is loaded as an upper filter, it will not be loaded until
an HCA is loaded, so user-mode applications will no longer be able to rely on
IBAL for CA PnP notifications. This would impact WSD for sure, though WSD
depends on the IBAT device anyway for address resolution, and this won’t
exist until the IB bus exists. So WSD could be re-architected to delay-load
IBAL until there are addresses reported by IBAT.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>Neither solution is all that great. Any other thoughts
and ideas?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class=MsoNormal>-Fab<o:p></o:p></p>
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