[Pkg-iscsi-maintainers] Bug#804162: open-iscsi: support iscsi root by format in RFC 4173 (root=iscsi:server:prot:...)

[Christian Seiler]

Control: tags -1 + confirmed
Control: severity -1 wishlist

On 11/05/2015 04:30 PM, Scott Moser wrote:
> RFC 4173 (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4173) documents a fairly compact
> mechanism for an iscsi target definition.  Copied from
> http://ipxe.org/sanuri:
>  | fmt of an iSCSI SAN URI is defined by RFC 4173. The general syntax is:
>  |    iscsi:<servername>:<protocol>:<port>:<LUN>:<targetname>
> 
> Examples:
>   iscsi:10.0.4.1:::1:iqn.2010-04.org.ipxe.dolphin:storage
>   iscsi:boot.ipxe.org::::iqn.2010-04.org.ipxe.boot:public
>   iscsi:192.168.0.1::::iqn.1991-05.com.microsoft:msdos622-target
>   iscsi:opensolaris.home::::iqn.1986-03.com.sun:02:e9abf4cd-714b-c6ec-d017-eea5a56252ed
> 
> For the first example there, the way that would be done in current
> parameters would be:
>   iscsi_target_name=iqn.2010-04.org.ipxe.dolphin:storage
>   iscsi_target_ip=10.0.4.1 iscsi_target_group=1
> 
> It'd be nice if we could just:
>   root=iscsi:10.0.4.1:::1:iqn.2010-04.org.ipxe.dolphin:storage
> 
> Note that RFC does not cover username and password, so that would have to
> be done outside the spec if needed.

Yes, this seems like a good idea for something to support. I see a
minor implementation detail that might need some thinking to fix:
currently, open-iscsi only adds itself to the initramfs if
/etc/iscsi/initramfs.iscsi exists - and the information in there
would be replaced by the root= parameter. On the other hand,
unconditionally adding the iSCSI binaries to the initramfs might
also not be wanted behavior, because it makes the initramfs larger.
(iSCSI can also be used for non-root filesystems.)

I'll take a look at how to best do this in the next couple of days.
Any good suggestions in advance are of course always welcome. ;-)

Regards,
Christian

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