From debian-devel  Fri Feb 20 12:17:51 2009
From: Bernd Schubert <bernd-schubert () gmx ! de>
Date: Fri, 20 Feb 2009 12:17:51 +0000
To: debian-devel
Subject: Re: Bug#516096: ITP: libibumad -- OpenFabrics Alliance InfiniBand umad (user MAD) library
Message-Id: <20090220121753.77560149C6 () heartbeat1 ! messagingengine ! com>
X-MARC-Message: https://marc.info/?l=debian-devel&m=123513378121077

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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