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

[Jason Gunthorpe]

On Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 02:38:00PM +0200, Patrick McHardy wrote:

>> Currently we register netdevice only after we have made sure that
>> we can connect to the EVIC and that there are enough resources on
>> the EVIC to support this virtual ethernet interface. But if we
>> register the netdevice without making sure that we can reach the
>> EVIC and that it has resources, there is a possibility that we
>> register a netdevice that can never become active.
>
> Thats similar to a ethernet device that never has a cable
> plugged in. You should register the device with its carrier
> turned off, then change the carrier state once the connection
> has been established.

I would also encourage you to embrace this view of the VNIC as a
tunnel fully and let the administrator re-target an active netdevice
to a different VNIC without tearing down the netdevice..

The user space interface for that pretty much come for free with the
netlink implementation, one of the advantages I suppose..

Jason