> I agree that some consolidation and reorganization is > required for the /dev tree. However, I do believe > it's important to maintain compatibility.
There is no doubt about the need to support the existing device naming system. If there are changes, they are going to be incremental. >Many > sysadmin's depend on knowing which device is on which > pci bus, pci slot, or IB cage , etc. It would be nice > if that trace-ability is not lost. Having generic > names is nice, but having specific names cXtWWNdXsX > is kinda handy when swapping a disk or moving a LUN. > To illustrate this issue.. lets say.. > > - 6900 with multiple domains > - Box is physically in another location > - Multiple NIC's and HBA's for multipathing > > If I want to know which NIC will be ce0 for > jumpstarting, this requires some foot work at the > OBP. > > So ce0 could be > /[EMAIL PROTECTED],0/[EMAIL PROTECTED],600000/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/[EMAIL > PROTECTED] in the OBP, > which translates to PCI slot 7 on IB6. This > information will be reflected in /devices. > > Same situation with HBA's: > > c12 could be /[EMAIL PROTECTED],0/[EMAIL PROTECTED],600000/SUNW,[EMAIL > PROTECTED] in > OBP, which translates to PCI slot 6 on IB6. > > Now multiply this by the number of NIC's and HBA's > and you have a lot to troubleshoot when something > goes wrong. The good part is that the information is > very specific, so I track down a component if I have > my sunsolve system handbook ready. This is both a > blessing and a curse. It takes time to track down > this kind of information. It would be nice to have a > command to present this information clearly and > correctly. Manually tracking it down can be a pain. > > The difficult part is appealing to everyone's tastes. > Some people depend on very specific info to make > decisions and to troubleshoot. Other people don't > want to care about such details because they are on a > PC. So reaching a balance between the two is > critical. > > Are there any examples of how this project could > change this situation? > What is described here sounds like an integrated tool that can display/show in one click/comman about the association of the triplets: "/dev logical name" - "/devices physical name" - "Sparc OBP name". Today, these information sets are scattered around /etc/path_to_inst file, /dev namespace, and /devices namespace. Available tools like prtconf/prtdiag shows part of it. Developing such a tool is not in the immediate scope of this project. Can this project help? I would say "yes". For the minimum, the existing tools can be enhanced/changed to talk with the /dev filesystem then the /devices filesystem, instead of the direct talking to the /devices filesystem. Besides, the /dev filesystem provides an intercepting point, which can be extended to resolve the /dev logcial names to an OBP path (on Sparc). It will be a good idea to start a new thread tackling the details of such an effort. lucy This message posted from opensolaris.org _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
