Description of problem: The OpenIPMI userspace libraries, version 1.4.3 and below, do not mutually exclude multiple userspace applications from issuing commands which utilize the IPMB protocol. IPMB, a very simple 3-wire I2C bus protocol, has very slow device semantics: commands are not sent atomically; the command sender must wait until the device responds; the sender must look at the sequence number of commands that finish and determine who sent them, to pass the response back to the proper caller. The libraries do not do this today; it is simple for multiple IPMI library-using applications to confuse themselves and other apps because this coordination does not occur. Chris Poblete from Dell is speaking with the OpenIPMI maintainer, Corey Minyard, about the proper way to solve this. Patches will be forthcoming, and will be worked through Corey as the upstream maintainer. Dell will need Red Hat to include a future version of the OpenIPMI userspace libraries which address this.
Per Chris Poblete in conversation with Corey Minyard, the OpenIPMI driver already does this coordination. Closing.