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

[Brian J. Murrell]

I have run into a conflict trying to build a matching kernel and
kernel-ib pair for OFED 1.3 and RHEL5's 2.6.18 kernel (although I
suspect this will apply to generally any kernel of the same vintage).

The problem is that OFED 1.3 appears to include/provide some iSCSI
support, such as drivers/scsi/scsi_transport_iscsi.c for one example
which is the "SCSI_ISCSI_ATTRS" kernel attribute.  The 2.6.18 RHEL5
kernel can provide the same capability if one decides to configure it
into the kernel build.

So the question arises, do I want to have the kernel provide it or have
kernel-ib provide it.  It's not quite that easy though.

If I disable it in the kernel, I also disable dependent drivers such as
SCSI_QLA_ISCSI (QLogic ISP4XXX host adapter family support).  In order
to disable it in the kernel-ib build I need to disable "iser" support
with "--without-iser-mod", which seems a bit like throwing the baby out
with the bathwater.

The reason I need to disable this in one place or another is that if my
kernel RPM is providing scsi_transport_iscsi.ko and so is kernel-ib, I
get an RPM conflict as the two files are in the same location in
the /lib/modules/$(uname -r) tree.

So how to resolve?  I don't think it can be resolved easily currently.
I think the ofa_kernel build system needs to be more intelligent about
what's selected in the kernel and not providing duplicate capabilities.
IOW, I should be able to select CONFIG_SCSI_ISCSI_ATTRS=m in my
kernel .config and CONFIG_INFINIBAND_ISER=m in my ofa_kernel
configuration and ofa_kernel should figure out if it needs to provide
SCSI_ISCSI_ATTRS (i.e. build scsi_transport_iscsi.ko) or whether the
kernel is configured to and will be providing it.

Thots?

b.

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