Hi Guenter, On Thu, 9 Dec 2010 08:58:58 -0800, Guenter Roeck wrote: > I am looking through libsensors and the hwmon sysfs ABI to identify and fix > inconsistencies. > > One problem I noticed is powerX_alarm, which is defined as "system is drawing > more power than the cap allows". > > powerX_cap is defined as " ... The *_cap files only appear if the cap is known > to be enforced by hardware". This is almost contradictory. If the cap is enforced, then it can't be exceeded, which means the alarm will never trigger.m > Now there are conditions where power limits are defined and supported, > but the hardware does not enforce it. Similar, there are devices reporting power > alarms not associated with cap enforcement. Examples are ltc4215 and PMBus devices. > powerX_alarm is supported by the ltc4215 driver, but there is no _cap attribute, > and the alarm is not associated with a maximum, thus a reported alarm doesn't > really reflect the ABI. > > I see a number of options: > > 1) Introduce powerX_max as unenforced "max" attribute, in addition to powerX_cap. > 1a) Introduce powerX_cap_alarm to reflect alarms associated with powerX_cap, > introduce powerX_max_alarm, and redefine the semantics of powerX_alarm > to include all possible alarms > 1b) Redefine semantics of powerX_alarm to include all possible reasons for > power alarms. > > 2) Redefine the semantics of powerX_cap to include unenforced maximum power. > Redefine powerX_alarm to include all possible reasons for alarms. > > My preferred solution would be 1) with 1b), though 2) would be fine for me as well. > Any thoughts / comments ? 1) (both a and b) is fine with me. 2) not so, as the _cap name gets confusing then. I don't think that _cap should have existed in the first place. Just because something happens when a limit is exceeded is no good reason to rename that limit to something else. But now that it's there, I guess it will be difficult to get rid of it. -- Jean Delvare _______________________________________________ lm-sensors mailing list lm-sensors@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.lm-sensors.org/mailman/listinfo/lm-sensors
