[Freeipmi-devel] Re: [llnl-devel] FreeIPMI conflict/issue list

[Albert Chu]

> Another problem is implementing ipmi_errno variable. How can we ensure
> thread safety? Is libc errno thread safe?

I didn't even notice the ipmi_errno variable.  Is this even necessary? 
I would think this is only necessary if we wrote much higher level
functions, such as "ipmi_setup_session" or something.  In the current
framework errors will exist in packet completion codes or in
sendto/recvfrom.  I feel its ok for errors from sendto/recvfrom to be
passed back to the user via libc errno.  I still don't know your code as
well as you, so you perhaps see something I don't see.

> Marshalling/Unmarshalling  - problem is the varying struct fields.
> 
> Do you mean - for every IPMI cmd we byte copy to generic void * byte
> sequence rather than structures ?

Although its painful, and a lot of code, ultimately I think this is the
safest approach.  The compiler aligns the structures in the memory just
like we want them to, but there is no guarantee they'll do that in the
future.  

An added bonus is that marshall/unmarshall functions will allow us to
fix endian issues.  We have a lot of IBM laptops floating around.  If
any of the sysadmins want to use ipmipower on those laptops, libfreeipmi
will completly bomb right now.

Al