Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S932179AbWCIXjq (ORCPT ); Thu, 9 Mar 2006 18:39:46 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S932170AbWCIXjp (ORCPT ); Thu, 9 Mar 2006 18:39:45 -0500 Received: from mx.pathscale.com ([64.160.42.68]:43911 "EHLO mx.pathscale.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S932164AbWCIXjo (ORCPT ); Thu, 9 Mar 2006 18:39:44 -0500 Subject: Re: [PATCH 9 of 20] ipath - char devices for diagnostics and lightweight subnet management From: "Bryan O'Sullivan" To: Roland Dreier Cc: rolandd@cisco.com, gregkh@suse.de, akpm@osdl.org, davem@davemloft.net, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, openib-general@openib.org In-Reply-To: References: Content-Type: text/plain Organization: PathScale, Inc. Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2006 15:39:41 -0800 Message-Id: <1141947581.10693.45.camel@serpentine.pathscale.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.2.3 (2.2.3-2.fc4) Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 733 Lines: 20 On Thu, 2006-03-09 at 15:20 -0800, Roland Dreier wrote: > I've never understood what forces you to maintain two separate SMAs. > Why can't you pick one of the two SMAs and use that unconditionally? Three reasons. * OpenSM wasn't usable when we wrote our SMA. We have customers using ours now, so we have to support it. * Our SMA does some setup for the layered ethernet emulation driver. * Our SMA works without an IB stack of any kind present.