cvs commit: src/etc Makefile sensorsd.conf src/etc/defaults rc.conf src/etc/rc.d Makefile sensorsd src/lib/libc/gen sysctl.3 src/sbin/sysctl sysctl.8 sysctl.c src/share/man/man5 rc.conf.5 src/share/man/man9 Makefile sensor_attach.9 src/sys/conf files ...

[Alexander Leidinger]

Quoting Scott Long <scottl at samsco.org> (from Mon, 15 Oct 2007 01:47:59 -0600):

> Alexander Leidinger wrote:
>> Quoting Poul-Henning Kamp <phk at phk.freebsd.dk> (from Sun, 14 Oct   
>> 2007 17:54:21 +0000):

>>> listen to the various mumblings about putting RAID-controller status
>>> under sensors framework.
>>
>> What's wrong with this? Currently each RAID driver has to come up   
>> with his own way of displaying the RAID status. It's like saying   
>> that each network driver has to implement/display the stuff you can  
>>  see with ifconfig in its own way, instead of using the proper   
>> network driver interface for this.
>>
>
> For the love of God, please don't use RAID as an example to support your
> argument for the sensord framework.  Representing RAID state is several
> orders of magnitude more involved than representing network state.
> There are also landmines in the OpenBSD bits of RAID support that are
> best left out of FreeBSD, unless you like alienating vendors and risking
> legal action.  Leave it alone.  Please.  I don't care what you do with
> lmsensors or cpu power settings or whatever.  Leave RAID out of it.

Talking about RAID status is not talking about alienating vendors. I  
don't talk about alienating vendors and I don't intent to do. You may  
not be able to display a full blown RAID status with the sensors  
framework, but it allows for a generic "wors/works not" or  
"OK/degraded" status display in drivers we have the source for. This  
is enough for status monitoring (e.g., nagios). I don't know if you  
talk about the OpenBSD bio framework or about some reverse engineered  
RAID drivers in OpenBSD (or bad mails from them to some vendors). From  
an user point of view the bio framework (as in "a generic interface  
for the sysadmin to do RAID stuff", and not as in "the concrete  
implementation in OpenBSD") is something you want to have. I don't  
think that it is a bad idea to port it (and improve it). OpenBSD has  
some RAID controllers converted to it and the framework already  
represents an usable interface for a lot of cases. I don't know if it  
needs improvement or not, I don't know if it can cover all current  
feature needs for such a framework for all possible RAID systems (most  
probably not), but it would be an improvement for vendors which want  
to write support for their RAID hardware as they don't have to come up  
with their own BSD code to manage those parts. And we could improve  
"our bio framwork" (if we had/get one) based upon vendor feedback (we  
already improved our network interfaces upon vendor feedback, haven't  
we?). In case you talk about porting some "alienated" raid drivers  
from OpenBSD... I agree that it is not a good idea to kick a vendor in  
the ass (a vendor which provides some kind of FreeBSD support... if  
there's a driver for raid hardware for which the vendor doesn't  
provide any support for a driver for FreeBSD at all, it depends upon  
the specific driver code from OpenBSD if it is a good idea to port it  
or not).

So in short: having a generic framework would be beneficial for  
vendors. Kicking vendors in the ass is not my intention. Feel free to  
document pitfalls in the RAID stuff in OpenBSD, so that nobody in  
FreeBSd-land makes the same mistakes (but is able to get good parts if  
the idea of an unified interface into FreeBSD).

Sorry for not taking the time to write a more readable mail.

Bye,
Alexander.

-- 
http://www.Leidinger.net  Alexander @ Leidinger.net: PGP ID = B0063FE7
http://www.FreeBSD.org     netchild @ FreeBSD.org  : PGP ID = 72077137
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