Re: Bug#516096: ITP: libibumad -- OpenFabrics Alliance InfiniBand umad (user MAD) library
Guus Sliepen wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 10:31:43AM +0000, Guy Coates wrote:
>
>> * Package name : libibumad
>> Version : 1.2.3
>> Upstream Author : Voltaire, Inc.
>> * URL : http://www.openfabrics.org
>
> I do not see a libibumad tarball there, I did find OFED-1.4.tgz which
> contained a SRPM for it... if this is the only way upstream distributes
> these libraries, please suggest to them that it is better if they publish
> normal tarballs.
Hmm, that is the difficult part. There are individual packages and there is
OFED. OFED is a collection of many packages, mostly not the recent version,
but a more tested stable version. E.g. IB management packages can be found
here: http://www.openfabrics.org/downloads/management/
I already wondered all the time, which would be better for Debian, the
packages from OFED or the individual packages. IHMO, extracting all the
srpms is a pain...
>
>> Description : OpenFabrics Alliance InfiniBand umad (user MAD)
>> library
>>
>> libibumad provides the user MAD library functions which sit on top of
>> the user MAD modules in the kernel. These are used by the IB diagnostic
>> and management tools, including OpenSM.
>
> I have absolutely no clue what this does, except that it has something to
> do
> with InfiniBand. What is MAD? What is OpenSM? What functionality does
> this library provide? Also drop "OpenFabrics Alliance" from the short
> description. If you want to mention it, do it in the long description.
>
The problem is, there is nowhere a real description of what all these IB
libraries are actually doing. MAD = management datagram. As far as I
understand it, you need this library to send IB management packages from
user space.
OpenSM = open subnet manager. Each IB network needs at least one running
subnet manager, which controls the routing between ports. From the man page
of opensm:
opensm provides an implementation of an InfiniBand Subnet Manager and
Administration. Such a software entity is required to run for
in order to initialize the InfiniBand hardware (at least one per each
InfiniBand subnet).
Guy, it is a bit a pity, since you did all the work again, we already had
done at q-leap :( IMHO all these IB packages are too many for one
maintainer, what do you think to make an alioth for these?
Cheers,
Bernd
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