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authorCorey Minyard <cminyard@mvista.com>2016-10-25 20:31:53 -0500
committerCorey Minyard <cminyard@mvista.com>2016-11-07 12:16:06 -0600
commitc11daf6a8fcc42d540ad6d7bb06a6a203de908b3 (patch)
tree18cc9c3b8e365318752c38568c7eeadb918efdf2 /Documentation/IPMI.txt
parent56189b5f2f0f386838f278e93654d2e2cbb51c9a (diff)
ipmi: Update documentation
The documentation has some information that was old and needed some things added that are new. Signed-off-by: Corey Minyard <cminyard@mvista.com>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/IPMI.txt')
-rw-r--r--Documentation/IPMI.txt57
1 files changed, 32 insertions, 25 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/IPMI.txt b/Documentation/IPMI.txt
index c0d8788e75d3..72292308d0f5 100644
--- a/Documentation/IPMI.txt
+++ b/Documentation/IPMI.txt
@@ -111,6 +111,8 @@ ipmi_ssif - A driver for accessing BMCs on the SMBus. It uses the
I2C kernel driver's SMBus interfaces to send and receive IPMI messages
over the SMBus.
+ipmi_powernv - A driver for access BMCs on POWERNV systems.
+
ipmi_watchdog - IPMI requires systems to have a very capable watchdog
timer. This driver implements the standard Linux watchdog timer
interface on top of the IPMI message handler.
@@ -118,17 +120,15 @@ interface on top of the IPMI message handler.
ipmi_poweroff - Some systems support the ability to be turned off via
IPMI commands.
-These are all individually selectable via configuration options.
+bt-bmc - This is not part of the main driver, but instead a driver for
+accessing a BMC-side interface of a BT interface. It is used on BMCs
+running Linux to provide an interface to the host.
-Note that the KCS-only interface has been removed. The af_ipmi driver
-is no longer supported and has been removed because it was impossible
-to do 32 bit emulation on 64-bit kernels with it.
+These are all individually selectable via configuration options.
Much documentation for the interface is in the include files. The
IPMI include files are:
-net/af_ipmi.h - Contains the socket interface.
-
linux/ipmi.h - Contains the user interface and IOCTL interface for IPMI.
linux/ipmi_smi.h - Contains the interface for system management interfaces
@@ -245,6 +245,16 @@ addressed (because some boards actually have multiple BMCs on them)
and the user should not have to care what type of SMI is below them.
+Watching For Interfaces
+
+When your code comes up, the IPMI driver may or may not have detected
+if IPMI devices exist. So you might have to defer your setup until
+the device is detected, or you might be able to do it immediately.
+To handle this, and to allow for discovery, you register an SMI
+watcher with ipmi_smi_watcher_register() to iterate over interfaces
+and tell you when they come and go.
+
+
Creating the User
To user the message handler, you must first create a user using
@@ -263,7 +273,7 @@ closing the device automatically destroys the user.
Messaging
-To send a message from kernel-land, the ipmi_request() call does
+To send a message from kernel-land, the ipmi_request_settime() call does
pretty much all message handling. Most of the parameter are
self-explanatory. However, it takes a "msgid" parameter. This is NOT
the sequence number of messages. It is simply a long value that is
@@ -352,11 +362,12 @@ that for more details.
The SI Driver
-------------
-The SI driver allows up to 4 KCS or SMIC interfaces to be configured
-in the system. By default, scan the ACPI tables for interfaces, and
-if it doesn't find any the driver will attempt to register one KCS
-interface at the spec-specified I/O port 0xca2 without interrupts.
-You can change this at module load time (for a module) with:
+The SI driver allows KCS, BT, and SMIC interfaces to be configured
+in the system. It discovers interfaces through a host of different
+methods, depending on the system.
+
+You can specify up to four interfaces on the module load line and
+control some module parameters:
modprobe ipmi_si.o type=<type1>,<type2>....
ports=<port1>,<port2>... addrs=<addr1>,<addr2>...
@@ -367,7 +378,7 @@ You can change this at module load time (for a module) with:
force_kipmid=<enable1>,<enable2>,...
kipmid_max_busy_us=<ustime1>,<ustime2>,...
unload_when_empty=[0|1]
- trydefaults=[0|1] trydmi=[0|1] tryacpi=[0|1]
+ trydmi=[0|1] tryacpi=[0|1]
tryplatform=[0|1] trypci=[0|1]
Each of these except try... items is a list, the first item for the
@@ -386,10 +397,6 @@ use the I/O port given as the device address.
If you specify irqs as non-zero for an interface, the driver will
attempt to use the given interrupt for the device.
-trydefaults sets whether the standard IPMI interface at 0xca2 and
-any interfaces specified by ACPE are tried. By default, the driver
-tries it, set this value to zero to turn this off.
-
The other try... items disable discovery by their corresponding
names. These are all enabled by default, set them to zero to disable
them. The tryplatform disables openfirmware.
@@ -434,7 +441,7 @@ kernel command line as:
ipmi_si.type=<type1>,<type2>...
ipmi_si.ports=<port1>,<port2>... ipmi_si.addrs=<addr1>,<addr2>...
- ipmi_si.irqs=<irq1>,<irq2>... ipmi_si.trydefaults=[0|1]
+ ipmi_si.irqs=<irq1>,<irq2>...
ipmi_si.regspacings=<sp1>,<sp2>,...
ipmi_si.regsizes=<size1>,<size2>,...
ipmi_si.regshifts=<shift1>,<shift2>,...
@@ -444,11 +451,6 @@ kernel command line as:
It works the same as the module parameters of the same names.
-By default, the driver will attempt to detect any device specified by
-ACPI, and if none of those then a KCS device at the spec-specified
-0xca2. If you want to turn this off, set the "trydefaults" option to
-false.
-
If your IPMI interface does not support interrupts and is a KCS or
SMIC interface, the IPMI driver will start a kernel thread for the
interface to help speed things up. This is a low-priority kernel
@@ -500,7 +502,8 @@ at module load time (for a module) with:
addr=<i2caddr1>[,<i2caddr2>[,...]]
adapter=<adapter1>[,<adapter2>[...]]
dbg=<flags1>,<flags2>...
- slave_addrs=<addr1>,<addr2>,...
+ slave_addrs=<addr1>,<addr2>,...
+ tryacpi=[0|1] trydmi=[0|1]
[dbg_probe=1]
The addresses are normal I2C addresses. The adapter is the string
@@ -513,6 +516,9 @@ spaces in kernel parameters.
The debug flags are bit flags for each BMC found, they are:
IPMI messages: 1, driver state: 2, timing: 4, I2C probe: 8
+The tryxxx parameters can be used to disable detecting interfaces
+from various sources.
+
Setting dbg_probe to 1 will enable debugging of the probing and
detection process for BMCs on the SMBusses.
@@ -535,7 +541,8 @@ kernel command line as:
ipmi_ssif.adapter=<adapter1>[,<adapter2>[...]]
ipmi_ssif.dbg=<flags1>[,<flags2>[...]]
ipmi_ssif.dbg_probe=1
- ipmi_ssif.slave_addrs=<addr1>[,<addr2>[...]]
+ ipmi_ssif.slave_addrs=<addr1>[,<addr2>[...]]
+ ipmi_ssif.tryacpi=[0|1] ipmi_ssif.trydmi=[0|1]
These are the same options as on the module command line.