[Stgt-devel] Question for pass-through target design

[Douglas Gilbert]

FUJITA Tomonori wrote:
> From: Robert Jennings <rcj at linux.vnet.ibm.com>
> Subject: [Stgt-devel] Question for pass-through target design
> Date: Fri, 4 May 2007 11:07:12 -0500
> 
>> It looks like the pass-through target support is currently broken, at
>> least as I've checked for ibmvstgt, but I think it's a general problem.
>> I wanted to check my assumptions and get ideas.
> 
> Yeah, unfortunately, it works only with the iSCSI target driver (which
> runs in user space).
> 
> 
>> The code isn't allocating any memory to pass along to the sg code to store
>> the result of a read or data for a write.  Currently, dxferp for sg_io_hdr
>> or dout_xferp/din_xferp for sg_io_v4 are assigned to the value of uaddr,
>> which is set to 0 in kern_queue_cmd.  With the pointer set to NULL,
>> the pass-through target isn't going to function.  Even if we had memory
>> allocated, there isn't a means of getting data to be written via sg down
>> this code path.
>>
>> What ideas are there as to how the data will get to user-space so that
>> we can use sg?
> 
> For kernel-space drivers, we don't need to go to user-space. We can do
> the pass-through in kernel space. I talked with James about this last
> year and he said that if the code is implemented cleanly, he would
> merges it into mainline.

We already have a pass-through in the kernel space for
kernel space drivers. It is the scsi_tgt* code. If it
could be made more flexible, such as handling multiple
boundary crossings per SCSI command, then I don't see
why another mechanism is needed. Once the events, associated
data structures and protocol are documented, then any user
space program that complies can replace tgtd.

Doug Gilbert

> Is anyone interested in implementing this?