[PATCH] ipmi: add timer thread
We must poll for responses to commands when interrupts aren't in use. The default poll interval is based on using a kernel timer, which varies with HZ. For character-based interfaces like KCS and SMIC though, that can be way too slow (>15 minutes to flash a new firmware with KCS, >20 seconds to retrieve the sensor list). This creates a low-priority kernel thread to poll more often. If the state machine is idle, so is the kernel thread. But if there's an active command, it polls quite rapidly. This decrease a firmware flash time from 15 minutes to 1.5 minutes, and the sensor list time to 4.5 seconds, on a Dell PowerEdge x8x system. The timer-based polling remains, to ensure some amount of responsiveness even under high user process CPU load. Checking for a stopped timer at rmmod now uses atomics and del_timer_sync() to ensure safe stoppage. Signed-off-by: Matt Domsch <Matt_Domsch@dell.com> Signed-off-by: Corey Minyard <minyard@acm.org> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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