Re: [Freeipmi-devel] in need of guidance...

[Al Chu]

Hi Arnaud,

On Sat, 2011-06-25 at 15:46 -0700, Arnaud Quette wrote:
> IPMI fellows,
> 
> first, congrats for the FreeIPMI project. it's a cool piece of
> software ;-)

Thanks.

> I'm currently having a look at IPMI to implement a PSU monitor driver
> for the NUT project:
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ServerOneiricInfraPower#NUT_PSU_.2BAC8_native_IPMI_driver
> 
> I've had a look at the various IPMI implementations out there, and
> FreeIPMI seems the most suitable.
> I've then had a look at FreeIPMI docs, code, svn, examples, contrib,
> and there I got lost!
> the code is very complex and hidden in many abstraction layers. And
> docs and examples are not very helpful.
> I also don't see pkg-config supports files (.pc).
> Have I missed something? or isn't it developer friendly :(

It depends on what you're trying to develop.  A few libs, like
libipmimonitoring and libipmiconsole are very suitable for high level
views of IPMI.  It's what a number of other developers use to do IPMI
stuff for monitoring and console access.

However, most of what's in libfreeipmi is at an abstraction level where
you need to know details from the IPMI specification to know what you're
doing.

> I've got the attached output from ipmi-fru and ipmi-sensors
> I'd like to do the exact same thing (ie identify and get all PSU
> information and events), but looking at the code and docs, I still
> don't see the light.

So what I gather is that you're looking to be able to program access to
the FRU and sensors, rather than do it via scripts from the tools?

With the current library everything you need is there.  But it's not at
an abstraction level that will probably give you a very easy interface.
I can describe in more detail the steps you'd have to take if you're
interested.

Al

> Could you please provide me some help and guidance?
> 
> thanks,
> Arnaud
> -- 
> Linux / Unix Expert R&D - Eaton - http://powerquality.eaton.com
> Network UPS Tools (NUT) Project Leader -
> http://www.networkupstools.org/
> Debian Developer - http://www.debian.org
> Free Software Developer - http://arnaud.quette.free.fr/
> 
-- 
Albert Chu
address@hidden
Computer Scientist
High Performance Systems Division
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory