[ewg] Re: [ofa-general] resolve conflict between OFED 1.3 and 2.6.18 with ISCSI

[Erez Zilber]

Brian J. Murrell wrote:

> On Mon, 2008-04-14 at 16:50 +0300, Erez Zilber wrote:
>   
>> I'm not sure if there's a real demand for this transport for OFED users,
>> is there?
>>     
>
> Maybe I'm not seeing the bigger picture but it seems pretty orthogonal
> to me.  Does using OFED 1.3 preclude using a qla4xxx host adapter?  IOW,
> is there anything inherent in using OFED 1.3 as the networking fabric on
> a (say) storage server that uses a QLogic ISP4XXX adapter to access it's
> storage?
>   

In theory, I don't think that we cannot add qla4xxx to open-iscsi in
OFED 1.3. The only problem is that someone actually has to do that. BTW
- you can't use open-iscsi from OFED 1.3 with qla4xxx from the distro
kernel because they may not work together.

>   
>> Adding qla4xxx will require backport patches for all supported
>> distros, and we don't have the HW to test it.
>>     
>
> Yeah, the old conundrum.
>
>   
>> Therefore, unless it's
>> really important for enough OFED users, I don't think that we should add it.
>>     
>
> Well, given the alternative that it's completely unbuildable in the
> kernel when you choose OFED's iscsi options, is including the qla4xxx in
> the OFED distribution, even untested so bad?
>   

I don't mind, but I'm not sure if Voltaire will do that. We need to make
a decision on that.

>   
>> BTW - I don't mind if other people add the required code to OFED 1.4 for
>> qla4xxx support.
>>     
>
> ~sigh~  Yeah.
>
> I wonder how many (if any) of our userbase we are going to upset if we
> cease providing the qla4xxx driver in our kernels.  On the other hand, I
> wonder how many we'd upset by not providing iSER and the newer
> open-iscsi modules.
>
>   

Yeah, I understand. Let me get back to you on this issue.

Erez