The IBA specification refers to management "interfaces" and "agents".
The interface is the component that connects to the queue pair and
sends and receives MADs; the agent is the component that constructs
the reply to the MAD.
Rename the IB_{QPN,QKEY,QPT} constants as a first step towards making
this separation in gPXE.
Queue pairs are now assumed to be created in the INIT state, with a
call to ib_modify_qp() required to bring the queue pair to the RTS
state.
ib_modify_qp() no longer takes a modification list; callers should
modify the relevant queue pair parameters (e.g. qkey) directly and
then call ib_modify_qp() to synchronise the changes to the hardware.
The packet sequence number is now a property of the queue pair, rather
than of the device.
Each queue pair may have an associated address vector. For RC queue
pairs, this is the address vector that will be programmed in to the
hardware as the remote address. For UD queue pairs, it will be used
as the default address vector if none is supplied to ib_post_send().
Now that MAD handlers no longer return a status code, we can allow
them to return a pointer to a MAD structure if and only if they want
to send a response. This provides a more natural and flexible
approach than using a "response method" field within the handler's
descriptor.
MAD handlers have to set the status fields within the MAD itself
anyway, in order to provide a meaningful response MAD; the additional
gPXE return status code is just noise.
Note that we probably don't need to ever explicitly set the status to
IB_MGMT_STATUS_OK, since it should already have this value from the
request. (By not explicitly setting the status in this way, we can
safely have ib_sma_set_xxx() call ib_sma_get_xxx() in order to
generate the GetResponse MAD without worrying that ib_sma_get_xxx()
will clear any error status set by ib_sma_set_xxx().)
The queue key is stored as a property of the queue pair, and so can
optionally be added by the Infiniband core at the time of calling
ib_post_send(), rather than always having to be specified by the
caller.
This allows IPoIB to avoid explicitly keeping track of the data queue
key.
Generalise the subnet management agent into a general management agent
capable of sending and responding to MADs, including support for
retransmissions as necessary.
Michael Brown