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hsuanyeh · 2011-04-25, 16:38

Do we still need to patch in an iSCSI initiator (e.g., open-iscsi), if the iSCSI target is sanhooked before booting?

***mcb30*** · 2011-04-26, 14:52

(2011-04-25 16:38)hsuanyeh Wrote: Do we still need to patch in an iSCSI initiator (e.g., open-iscsi), if the iSCSI target is sanhooked before booting?

Yes. Linux (along with essentially all operating systems except DOS) requires a native iSCSI initiator and network card drivers. It can't use the INT13 interface provided by iPXE.

Linux can make use of the iBFT and EDD information to identify the iSCSI disks that were hooked by iPXE, but it still needs a native initiator (e.g. open-iscsi) in order to connect to them.

***robinsmidsrod*** · 2011-04-26, 19:15

(2011-04-26 14:52)mcb30 Wrote: Linux can make use of the iBFT and EDD information to identify the iSCSI disks that were hooked by iPXE, but it still needs a native initiator (e.g. open-iscsi) in order to connect to them.

I just wanted to chime in and inform you that iscsistart -b (flag available in recent open-iscsi) should connect iSCSI targets according to iBFT data. Not sure how well it works, as I haven't tried it yet. iscsistart -N can be used to bring up the network from iBFT data also, and iscsistart -f will print iBFT debug data to the screen. It is all in the iscsistart(8) man page.

Unfortunately the feature is too new to be present in Ubuntu 10.04. Sad

hsuanyeh · 2011-04-26, 19:26

(2011-04-26 14:52)mcb30 Wrote:
(2011-04-25 16:38)hsuanyeh Wrote: Do we still need to patch in an iSCSI initiator (e.g., open-iscsi), if the iSCSI target is sanhooked before booting?

Yes. Linux (along with essentially all operating systems except DOS) requires a native iSCSI initiator and network card drivers. It can't use the INT13 interface provided by iPXE.

Linux can make use of the iBFT and EDD information to identify the iSCSI disks that were hooked by iPXE, but it still needs a native initiator (e.g. open-iscsi) in order to connect to them.

Has anyone done patches to those major Linux distros, such as Debian, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE etc.? It is not very easy from a user's perspective to manually configure open-iscsi into the kernel. Fedora installer gets it done nicely, but it locks the MAC address...