[ofa-general] Re: [PATCH v4 14/14] QLogic VNIC: sysfs Documentation

[Ramachandra K]

On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 8:48 PM, Patrick McHardy <kaber at trash.net> wrote:
> Amar Mudrankit wrote:
>>>>
>>>> +/sys/class/infiniband_qlgc_vnic/interfaces/<VNIC-interface-name>/
>>>> +
>>>> +       vnic_state      (0444)  State of the VNIC interface.
>>>
>>> This I don't understand - you seem to be registering and
>>> unregistering the net_device based some state machine,
>>> in some cases even triggered by timers.
>>>
>>> Whats the idea behind this?
>>
>> For a given VNIC interface, unless the VNIC host driver establishes a
>> connection with EVIC
>> and completes the control and data path communication sequence with
>> the EVIC, the
>> VNIC network device is not registered on the host.  Establishing a
>> connection with EVIC
>> and going through the control and data path communication involves
>> multiple packet
>> exchange on the IB side with the EVIC and can take some time.  The
>> netpath statemachine is, hence, meant to PERIODICALLY check if
>> connection is fully established with EVIC or not.
>> Once connection is established, it takes care to register the VNIC
>> netdevice.
>
>
> We have linkstate/operstate for this. How is a user supposed
> to configure the network device when it appears at a more or
> less random time from his perspective?
>
If you are referring to IP address configuration etc, users can configure
the interfaces by setting up ifcfg files and the interfaces are automatically
configured when they are registered.

Regards,
Ram