[ewg] Re: [ofa-general] OFED Jan 28 meeting summary on RC3 readiness

[Chet Mehta]

Robert, 

In response to your question......
> A more general question I would like to ask the group is how many people 
use OFED from the RH or SUSE distros as
> is, as compared with using OFED releases from other sources like the IB 
vendors, or building their own from 
> openfabrics.org?  We use RH distros, but to this point, the OFED support 
provided in RH distros has lagged 
> behind the latest releases available from openfabrics.org.  This is not 
to fault Red Hat, but OFED is still 
> changing too rapidly, with minor point releases and bug fixes, for a 
distro to keep up.  I think many of us hope
> that someday that will not be the case, but appears to be true for the 
foreseeable future.  Right now, our mode 
> of operation is to remove whatever IB support comes in the distro and 
replace it, so it does not help us to 
> delay  OFED 1.3 to get a particular bug fix in a distro.

I believe the question that should be asked is "'How many IB customers 
would like to use the OFED distribution if provided by the distro?"  The 
answer at least for the customer set we deal with is pretty much 
unanimous. The fact is that customers are already dealing with a distro 
for their base OS so obtaining the interconnect code & support from the 
same sources is highly desirable. When OpenIB was new (in 2004/5) and 
"common" IB code was still in its infancy, the customer set was tolerant 
of 'build your own' or vendor provided distribution mechanism. However if 
IB is to become a ubiquitous interconnect, we in OFA have to strive to 
tailor our deliverables to meet distro requirements. Until we do that, IB 
will have difficultly gaining broader market acceptance.

Just my perspective.

:Chet.
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