On Wed, 2008-02-13 at 11:22 -0500, James Smart wrote: > James Bottomley wrote: > > I don't disagree with that, but the fact is that there isn't such a > > tool. It's also a fact that the enterprise is reasonably unhappy with > > the lack of an enclosure management infrastructure, since it's something > > they got on all the other unix systems. > > I don't disagree. > > > I think a minimal infrastructure in-kernel does just about everything > > the enterprise wants ... and since it's stateless, they can always use > > direct connect tools in addition. > > > > However, I'm happy to be proven wrong ... anyone on this thread is > > welcome to come up with a userland enclosure infrastructure. Once it > > does everything the in-kernel one does (which is really about the > > minimal possible set), I'll be glad to erase the in-kernel one. > > yeah, but... putting something new in, only to pull it later, is a bad > paradigm for adding new mgmt interfaces. Believe me, I've felt users pain in > the reverse flow : driver-specific stuff that then has to migrate to upstream > interfaces, complicated by different pull points by different distros. You can > migrate a management interface, but can you really remove/pull one out ? That depends on the result. I agree that migration will be a pain, so I suppose I set the bar a bit low; the user tool needs to be a bit more compelling; plus I'll manage the interface transition ... if there is one; there's no such tool yet. > Isn't it better to let the lack of an interface give motivation to create > the "right" interface, once the "right way" is determined - which is what I > thought we were discussing ? or is this simply that there is no motivation > until something exists, that people don't like, thus they become motivated ? Well ... I did learn the latter from Andrew, so I thought I'd try it. It's certainly true that the enclosure problem has been an issue for over a decade, so there doesn't seem to be anything motivating anyone to solve it. I wouldn't have bothered except that I could see ad-hoc in-kernel sysfs solutions beginning to appear. At least this way they can all present a unified interface. James - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-ide" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
