Re: [PATCH 1/3] Add virtioblk_id tool to extract drive serial numbers

[Ryan Harper <ryanh@us.ibm.com>]

* Kay Sievers <kay.sievers@vrfy.org> [2010-06-14 08:30]:
> On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 15:15, Ryan Harper <ryanh@us.ibm.com> wrote:
> > * Kay Sievers <kay.sievers@vrfy.org> [2010-06-14 03:55]:
> >> On Thu, Jun 10, 2010 at 21:16, Ryan Harper <ryanh@us.ibm.com> wrote:
> >> > Use the 'VBID' virtio-blk ioctl to extract drive serial numbers
> >> > to be used for building disk/by-id symlinks.  After extracting
> >> > the serial number of the device it prints out the minimum info
> >> > needed in a similar format to `scsi_id --export` so that the
> >> > persistent-storage rules can process the serial information.
> >> >
> >> > This program depends on the virtio-blk serial device patches posted
> >> > here[1] being applied to qemu and linux-kernel.
> >> >
> >> > Here is what the output looks like:
> >> >
> >> > % ./virtioblk_id /dev/vdb
> >> > ID_VIRTIO=1
> >> > ID_TYPE=disk
> >> > ID_SERIAL=QM00001
> >> > ID_SERIAL_SHORT=QM00001
> >>
> >> As requested in the ealier mail. Please provide a good reason why the
> >> kernel code can not create a "serial" file (or whatever fits your
> >> needs) in sysfs at the block device.
> >
> > I didn't see you respond John's email:
> >
> > http://www.spinics.net/lists/hotplug/msg03869.html
> >
> > which included quite  bit of the gory history on this topic.
> 
> Yeah, and I don't find any reason there, why a sysfs attribute will not work.

You were quite right; the sysfs attribute route was rather simple.
Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.  We've got the
kernel-side fix picked up.  I've posted v3 of this series that uses the
sysfs attribute.

Thanks!

-- 
Ryan Harper
Software Engineer; Linux Technology Center
IBM Corp., Austin, Tx
ryanh@us.ibm.com