netdev - Re: [PATCH net-next 2/2] liquidio: Add support to create management interface

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Date:   Tue, 18 Jul 2017 11:58:27 -0700
From:   Jakub Kicinski <jakub.kicinski@...ronome.com>
To:     Felix Manlunas <felix.manlunas@...ium.com>
Cc:     davem@...emloft.net, netdev@...r.kernel.org,
        raghu.vatsavayi@...ium.com, derek.chickles@...ium.com,
        satananda.burla@...ium.com, veerasenareddy.burru@...ium.com
Subject: Re: [PATCH net-next 2/2] liquidio: Add support to create management
 interface

On Mon, 17 Jul 2017 12:52:17 -0700, Felix Manlunas wrote:
> From: VSR Burru <veerasenareddy.burru@...ium.com>
> 
> This patch adds support to create a virtual ethernet interface to
> communicate with Linux on LiquidIO adapter for management.
> 
> Signed-off-by: VSR Burru <veerasenareddy.burru@...ium.com>
> Signed-off-by: Srinivasa Jampala <Srinivasa.Jampala@...ium.com>
> Signed-off-by: Satanand Burla <satananda.burla@...ium.com>
> Signed-off-by: Raghu Vatsavayi <raghu.vatsavayi@...ium.com>
> Signed-off-by: Felix Manlunas <felix.manlunas@...ium.com>

Not my call, but I have mixed feelings about this one.  Is there any
precedent under drivers/net/ethernet of exposing special communication
channels with FW like this?  It's irrelevant to me that you're running
SSH, arbitrary communication with FW from userspace is not something
netdev community usually accepts.  And I'm afraid what the effects will
be of this getting accepted.  I'm pretty sure most modern network
adapters have management CPU cores perfectly capable of running Linux.
I know NFP does, here is the out-of-tree code equivalent to this patch:

https://github.com/Netronome/nfp-drv-kmods/blob/master/src/nfpcore/nfp_net_vnic.c

I'm not looking forward to a world where I have to ssh into my NIC and
run vendor commands to configure things.