[Beowulf] IMPI network monitoring

[Mark Hahn]

> capabilities.  I cannot seem to find a way to interrogate these systems and
> get the status of the network interfaces.  In particular I want to see if
> there are dropped packets, bad frames, collisions...  That kind of thing.

I wouldn't expect to be able to do that.  things like dropped packets
are inherently OS-dependent, and not simply some counter on the NIC.
further, the IPMI "coprocessor" (BMC) is, afaikt, normally limited to 
interacting only with the I2C bus on the system, which would connect 
to things like the fan controller.  but I'd expect a nic to not have 
an I2C connection, and only talk over PCI.

> Going through the OS is not an option as they are running as an embedded
> platform.

I think you mean "going through user-space like ssh host ifconfig".
but does your environment actually preclude querying the OS directly,
such as adding a kernel hook which responds to specific packets
with data pulled from the (OS-level) counters for dropped packets?
for instance, I believe ICMP packets are handled entirely within
the kernel...  full SNMP in the kernel is probably a terrible idea,
but something more basic might be eminently doable.

regards, mark hahn.