[ofa-general] Re: [PATCH] opensm & osm_console: modified console framework to support multiple connections

[Sasha Khapyorsky]

Hi Tim,

On 10:53 Thu 01 Nov     , Timothy A. Meier wrote:
> >
> > I think we need to close threading issue first. Then patch series of 2
> > looks fine for me.
> >
> >   
>  I really think the "thread-per-session" would be a more flexible and 
>  powerful
>  design. Setting up and maintaining threads might seem more complex at first,
>  but it makes servicing requests/commands much more simple because everything 
>  is
>  in its own context.

And require proper locking, thread termination handling, etc.. Which is
not always easy even with full featured pthread library, and especially
hard with limited cl_thread*() primitives... I didn't analyze submitted
code in this aspect - just tried to save the time... :)

>  The previous Console used a polling mechanism, and I found an edge case 
>  condition
>  which allowed one connection to block the other.

How? There is no "blocking" commands? Right?

>  Thread-per-session (or 
>  thread
>  per connection) makes it difficult for one session to influence another.
> 
>  The number of threads/connections would be limited. Other than the normal
>  multi-threading issues, are there other thread hazards in OFED/OpenSM that I
>  need to be aware of?

Another reason is to not get too much cpus from another OpenSM threads
(which mainly are responsible for IB MADs processing).

Sasha