This is a SCSI driver for HP (Compaq) Smart Array 5xxx controllers. SCSI people can skip the following two paragraphs. Currently, a driver for HP (Compaq) Smart Array 5xxx controllers is implemented as a block device driver, block/cciss.c (aka, cciss). But the controller interface is SCSI-3 compatible. The specification says, "A controller that supports CISS is considered to be a SCSI storage array controller". A scsi driver for the controllers was discussed several times. I think that a SCSI cciss driver can be much simpler (and maintainable) than the block cciss driver (the majority of the code forging SCSI command can go away, we have the proper sysfs entries for free, we can handle scsi tape drives easily etc). It would be helpful for distributions too since they don't need stuff specific to cciss (such as udev rules). There isn't any easy migration path for users. So I think that we need to keep the block and scsi drivers for cciss for some time (say two years). My scsi driver is still in an early stage (I tried to keep the changes minimum). I can detect logical units, mount a file system, do lots of I/Os, however, there are lots of TODOs in the management features. If I can get an ACK from HP about the long-term migration of cciss to SCSI, I'm happy to keep working on the SCSI cciss driver and maintain it until HP takes over the driver. The patch is available at: http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/tomo/ciss/0001-add-HP-Compaq-Smart-Array-5xxx-controller-SCSI-dri.patch clover:/home/fujita# insmod ciss.ko clover:/home/fujita# lsscsi (snip) [1:0:0:0] disk HP LOGICAL VOLUME 1.66 /dev/sde [1:0:0:1] disk HP LOGICAL VOLUME 1.66 /dev/sdf [1:0:0:2] disk HP LOGICAL VOLUME 1.66 /dev/sdg [1:0:0:3] disk HP LOGICAL VOLUME 1.66 /dev/sdh Yeah, it just works as SCSI disk, the dmesg says: sd 1:0:0:0: [sde] Attached SCSI disk sd 1:0:0:1: [sdf] 143305920 512-byte hardware sectors (73373 MB) sd 1:0:0:1: [sdf] Write Protect is off sd 1:0:0:1: [sdf] Mode Sense: 5b 00 00 08 sd 1:0:0:1: [sdf] Write cache: disabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA I needed a different name and just stole 'ciss' from *BSD. But any names (like hpciss) works for me. Thanks, -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-scsi" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
