README.Force

This package includes preliminary OEM support for Force Computers (TM)
cards.  This is still somewhat experimental.  Note that you NEED the
v22 version of the OpenIPMI driver to use the dual MC handling code
for Force, it solves some race conditions between the separate
interfaces.

This driver includes OEM handling for connections to Force CPCI
systems.  It will automatically handle setting up the connections for
you, you do not need to set up a card as the BMC any more.

I have done most of my testing with the LAN server running on Force
card over ethernet to my host machine, hooking to two card running the
LAN server.

The Force handling of BMCs is different than other systems.  You can
set the MC on a Force card to be a BMC at address 0x20 or a "normal"
MC.  The capabilities of the MC change depending on if it is a BMC or
not.  Only the BMC can be an event receiver or SDR repository, for
instance.  Any you can only have on BMC in a system at a time.

OpenIPMI can automatically manage setting one of the Force cards to a
BMC (OpenIPMI calls that "activating" the connection) upon connection,
and when the "active" connection fails.  However, this means that the
addresses changes from the PICMG specified address to the BMC address
(and the card that becomes inactive will be set from the BMC address
back to the PICMG address, if it is still active), and the
capabilities will change, so the OpenIPMI MC will be destroyed and
re-created (along with all the sensors and entities) for both the old
and the new active connections.

If Force ever allows a non-BMC device to be an event receiver and SDR
repository, I'll change it to be an active-active connection, since
the current kind of connection is difficult for OpenIPMI to handle
properly.  I haven't thought of a nice "smooth" way to handle this
type of interface.

If you have a single connection to a Force system, it's not big deal,
of course.  Your connection will be set to the BMC and everything will
be happy.  This only affects dual connections.  Of course, if you
connect two different OpenIPMI-enabled programs to two different cards,
they will get into a war about who's connection is active, so you
shouldn't do this.