[openib-general] Re: [PATCH 9 of 20] ipath - char devices for diagnostics and lightweight subnet management

[Roland Dreier]

    Bryan> Because we don't want to be forced to have an IB stack
    Bryan> present in order to run the minimal SMA.

I'm still lost.  What I mean by an SMA is something that generates a
response to MAD queries, eg GETs of NodeDescription or SETs of
PortInfo.  You need that for a subnet manager to be able to configure
your port, so clearly your userspace SMA handles those queries.
However, you also have code in ib_path.ko module like
recv_subn_set_portinfo() that handles the exact same queries.  There
must be some code duplication going on.

Maybe one way of phrasing my question is why you need two different
implementations of parsing a SET of PortInfo and generating a response.

 - R.