[openib-general] Advice

[Sean Hefty]

>Just so I understand. When you say 'svn code matches' it means a) the
>kernel modules are the same (or close enough). b) the usermode stuff
>will/should work without a problem. Could you be a little more specific?
>Just curious how this works until things stabilize more.

The IB code included in kernel.org is from the svn gen2/trunk.  The code is
developed in OpenIB, then pushed upstream to kernel.org.  I.e.
linux-2.6.15/drivers/infiniband is a subset of
gen2/trunk/src/linux-kernel/infiniband.  The code in svn is a little more up to
date.

The usermode portion in gen2/trunk/src/userspace should work with the code in
the kernel.

>Mainly, I am interested in the verb layer for know so my needs are not
>that great. However, is there a reason to compile and use the svn kernel
>modules in place of the supplied ones? Or, as you mentioned above - are
>fixes/patches picked up by the distributions in between stable kernel
>releases.

>Hmm, this is what I am looking for so that is actually a good thing for
>me. Except for having to rebuild the kernel to use the svn driver code.
>I suppose that I could just stick with building the usermode stuff and
>use the supplied kernel modules since I am not using any of the missing
>stuff.

Note that it's fairly easy to drop in the svn code into the kernel if you want
to go that route.  You just need to link linux/drivers/infiniband to the svn
infiniband directory, and remove linux/include/rdma.  It doesn't sound like
you'll need to do this though.

>I also noticed that a person from redhat has provided some rpm modules
>of the usermode libraries. Is anyone using these? Is this a reasonable
>way to go? I suppose it is just a convenience.

That I don't know the answer to.

- Sean