[stgt] Max Sessions per Target

[Bruno Condez]

Hi Everyone,

I'm looking for what I hope to be a quick help from you stgt developers.

I run stgt 1.0.33 on a Centos 6.2 OS and i'm looking for a way to limit
the number of sessions a target can have.

A bit of background:
I have a bunch of client computers booting their OS through software iSCSI
by leveraging iPXE.
I pxe boot iPXE which then presents a LUN to the computer as a local disk
which then instructs such computer to boot from it.
These computers are used by different users who need their own OS
customized a specific way and bootable from different computers (same
hardware through).

Each user as it's own target.
A boot menu exists that allows a user to choose his own target (OS image)
from a list.
Now, the reason why I need to limit the number of sessions is to prevent 2
users from booting the same LUN. Users can make mistakes and accidentally
(or on purpose) boot someone else's LUNs.

There are reasons why setting up CHAP authentication or initiator ACLs
will not work for this specific setup.

Hence, limiting the sessions per targets is the desired effect that works
for this setup.

I have found a patch from 2008 that makes every target allow only a single
session.
In particular, the code below does the trick:

diff --git a/usr/target.c b/usr/target.c
index dc30c87..91085dc 100644
--- a/usr/target.c
+++ b/usr/target.c
@@ -248,6 +248,9 @@ int it_nexus_create(int tid, uint64_t itn_id, int
host_no, char *info)

        target = target_lookup(tid);

+       if (!list_empty(&target->it_nexus_list))
+               return -EEXIST;
+
        itn = zalloc(sizeof(*itn));
        if (!itn)
                return -ENOMEM;



I've applied that patch to the current code (git'ed today) and it does
work as intended.

However, I actually need it to allow a max of 2 sessions per target.
This is because, during initial boot, iPXE creates a session and presents
the LUN to the computer.; which  then boots from that LUN and during boot
the OS detects it's on iSCSI and takes over iSCSI handling from
 iPXE by establishing a new session to the same target.
When this happens, in tgtadm output I see two sessions from the same IP,
though the original session shows 0 connections and the second session 1
connection (the actual OS). But for tgt, there are still two sessions.

So, would it be possible to have a patch similar to the above but that
allows a max of 2 sessions? Or a user configurable value?

I realize this is a very specific request. I'm ok with this patch being
ad-hoc, not officially supported and me having to deal with it on my own.
I would do such patch myself but my knowledge of C is zero.

I do appreciate any help in getting this specific request going.

Cheers,
Bruno


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