[ofa-general] Re: How to tell what OFED rev a distro derived IB modules?

[Vladislav Bolkhovitin]

Chris Worley, on 04/27/2009 10:29 PM wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 11:51 AM, Vladislav Bolkhovitin <vst at vlnb.net> wrote:
>> Chris Worley, on 04/27/2009 07:54 PM wrote:
>>> On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 5:03 AM, Bart Van Assche
>>> <bart.vanassche at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 8:27 AM, Jack Morgenstein
>>>> <jackm at dev.mellanox.co.il> wrote:
>>>>> The OFED distributions may contain features that the mainstream kernels
>>>>> and libraries do not support.
>>>>> These features frequently require changes in the Infiniband kernel
>>>>> modules.  Such changes are in the form
>>>>> of kernel patches which are applied to the base mainstream kernel on
>>>>> which the OFED release is based.
>>>>> A lag between the mainstream kernel and the OFED kernel is unavoidable,
>>>>> since the new features are first
>>>>> released in the OFED distributions -- and later, gradually (and
>>>>> hopefully), these features make there way
>>>>> into the upstream kernel.
>>>> I don't doubt that there is a good reason why new features go in the
>>>> OFED distribution first and later in the mainstream Linux kernel.
>>> My opinion is: IB is still just too bleeding edge, even for the
>>> vanilla Linux kernel.
>>>
>>> Maybe "Upstream First" is the measure of IB achieving stability.
>>>
>>> SRP (specifically the SCST target code) is my first case in using IB
>>> where I've not been able to start with the latest OFED (or IBGD)
>>> stable release, as OFED is unsupported by the SRP target code, and had
>>> to start with a distro's IB version to get a working SRP target (of
>>> which Ubuntu 8.10 provided the only stable SRP target distro for my
>>> configuration).
>> I think, to find out who's guilty, OFED or SRP target driver, you should
>> simply try the latest SCST/SRP driver from the SCST SVN trunk with the known
>> working OFED. Only make sure you don't have again mixed up older and new
>> SCST headers.
> 
> SCST's latest ip_srpt hung (which was well documented in the SCST
> list) with OFED 1.4 (and 1.4.1rc3)... to which the reply was "SCST
> doesn't support OFED, only distros", so the Ubuntu 8.10 was the only
> recourse, as it uses more up-to-date drivers from OFED (close to OFED
> 1.4), which solved the reliability issue.
> 
> There were never "mixed up header" issues, as also documented on the SCST list.

In the SCST list clearly documented how well you mixed them up :/

> Chris
>