Jean Delvare wrote: > Hi Yani, > > Could you please explain to us what i2c-ipmi does? I understand it acts > as an interface between the bmcsensors driver and something else, but I > yet have to learn what that other thing is, and why an interface is > needed at all. As I understand it, i2c-ipmi is no I2C or SMBus master > driver, but a kind of hack much like the i2c-isa driver is. I don't > exactly enjoy the way i2c-isa works, and I plan to get rid of it at some > point in time (hopefully in a near future), so let's not do something > equally ugly here. > > Thanks, Don't pick on Yani too hard, he's just porting what I wrote. i2c-ipmi is indeed a bridge between bmcsensors and the IPMI subsystem. There's some documentation in doc/busses/i2c-ipmi and you can also look at the code in 2.4. Yes it's a little bit of a hack but I thought this architecture was the best way to get IPMI data out through the sensors API. Sure there are other ways to do it and you could use some full-blown IPMI app but this is a good way to get people the info that gets hidden behind all the IPMI stuff - i.e. their sensor info. I think the dummy driver approach has value for those who want to present data via the sensors API. As you may recall I did something similar for hard drive temperatures (S.M.A.R.T) a while back. If you have a better way to do dummy bus drivers let's hear it but let's not ban dummy bus drivers (or new dummy bus drivers anyway) altogether. mds
