Greetings James and Co, I would like to formally request the inclusion of TCM Core v4 codebase containing the fabric independent configfs infrastructure design and TCM_Loop SCSI LLD fabric module supporting multi-fabric I_T Nexus and Port emulation for SAS, FC and iSCSI into mainline for v2.6.35 The plan is to push TCM Core and the TCM_Loop LLD module for use with existing userspace applications into mainline first, and then focus on extending the upstream fabric libraries (libiscsi, libfc, libsas) for new and future TCM modules to support a common set of kernel-level target mode infrastructure for HW and SW fabric engines once the main target pieces are in place. On the userspace fabric <-> kernel backstore side, the TCM_Loop fabric module is currently running with full SPC-3 PR and ALUA support using fabric-independent virtual SCSI target port emulation with the STGT iSCSI userspace fabric code and SG_IO backstores. TCM_Loop is also being used with SG_IO for QEMU-KVM megasas HBA emulation into Linux and MSFT x86 guests and is able to run at sustained 10 Gb/sec throughput into KVM guest. For the kernelspace fabric <-> userspace backstore side for v2.6.35, the plan is to extend the existing drivers/scsi/scsi_tgt_[lib,if].c direct mapped ring interface to the WIP kernel level TCM/STGT subsystem backstore plugin mentioned in previously on linux-scsi. This will allow projects presenting a userspace block device to access existing TCM kernel level target module fabric drivers. For the LIO-Target iSCSI fabric module, I would like to move in the direction of extending libiscsi to support kernel-level software iSCSI target logic. We will be supporting an out of tree build package for LIO-Target on top of mainline v2.6.35, until such time libiscsi can be extended and the LIO-Target fabric module merged into mainline. For the TCM_FC + Open-FCoE.org module, extending the libfc module to support explict FC lport configuration for both HW and SW FCoE target mode is what I would like to see implemented. Note that we do intended to support existing target mode HBAs as seperate TCM fabric modules that use self-contained and vendir/driver specific target infrastructure, and convert these over to use yet-to-be determined target mode capaible libsas, libfc and libiscsi as interest dictates. Supporting these HBAs will also include a set patches to support target port config-time allocation of scatterlist memory for use with existing TCM v4.0 struct scatterlist -> se_mem_t zero-copy memory mapping logic. I will also be including existing standalone vendor target mode driver code into branches on lio-core-2.6.git, and maintaining these drivers and intending to get these merged as well in the post v2.6.35 timeframe. In the mean time, I will prepare a mainline branch containg TCM Core and TCM_Loop and would be happy to re-post the v4 code in it's entirety for review, but AFAIK all of the important v4 patches have already been posted (with minimal feedback) to linux-scsi and the configfs related to linux-fsdevel. As always, I am open to constructive suggestions, Best, --nab -- 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
