On 1/21/21 8:32 AM, Jiri Pirko wrote: > Thu, Jan 21, 2021 at 12:41:58AM CET, k...@kernel.org wrote: >> On Wed, 20 Jan 2021 14:56:46 +0100 Andrew Lunn wrote: >>>> No, the FW does not know. The ASIC is not physically able to get the >>>> linecard type. Yes, it is odd, I agree. The linecard type is known to >>>> the driver which operates on i2c. This driver takes care of power >>>> management of the linecard, among other tasks. >>> >>> So what does activated actually mean for your hardware? It seems to >>> mean something like: Some random card has been plugged in, we have no >>> idea what, but it has power, and we have enabled the MACs as >>> provisioned, which if you are lucky might match the hardware? >>> >>> The foundations of this feature seems dubious. >> >> But Jiri also says "The linecard type is known to the driver which >> operates on i2c." which sounds like there is some i2c driver (in user >> space?) which talks to the card and _does_ have the info? Maybe I'm >> misreading it. What's the i2c driver? > > That is Vadim's i2c kernel driver, this is going to upstream. >
This pre-provisioning concept makes a fragile design to work around h/w shortcomings. You really need a way for the management card to know exactly what was plugged in to a slot so the control plane S/W can respond accordingly. Surely there is a way for processes on the LC to communicate with a process on the management card - even if it is inband packets with special headers.
