I'm neither an acpi developer (well I don't think that I am :) nor an
end-user, but here are the two things for which I was going to use the
information being presented by Alex's patch:
1) a not-yet, but on track to be released tool to be used by end-users
to diagnose I/O bottlenecks - the information in
/sys/bus/pci/slot/<foo>/address would be used to associated interfaces
and/or pci busses etc with something the end user would grok - the
number next to the slot.
2) I was also going to get the folks doing installers to make use of the
"end-user" slot ID. Even without going to the extreme of the
aforementioned 192 slot system, an 8 slot system with a bunch of
dual-port NICs in it (for example) is going to present this huge list of
otherwise identical entries. Even if the installers show the MAC for a
NIC (or I guess a WWN for an HBA or whatnot) that still doesn't tell one
without prior knowledge of what MACs were installed in which slot, which
slot is associated with a given ethN. Having the end-user slot ID
visible is then going to be a great help to that poor admin who is doing
the install.
rick jones
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