Re: [PATCH] 4/6: scsi_allow_ghost_devices

[Christoph Hellwig <hch@infradead.org>]

On Mon, Apr 19, 2004 at 08:06:22AM -0400, Doug Ledford wrote:
> Actually, the original reason for the patch was the fact that some
> external boxes use LUN 0 as a control device that you send commands to
> in order to init logical volumes.  Without access to the control device
> (which previously was always shown as offline), you couldn't set the box
> up with any linux tools, you would have to set up the logical volumes
> under Windows then boot into linux to see them.  Since the LUN 0 device
> wasn't really offline, but instead was reported as a disk device with no
> attached physical device, this patch was created to allow the linux
> kernel to send commands to the control device.

Man is that a horrible cludge.  Can't one of the EMC folks on this list
kick their firmware group to fix this horrible crap? I.e. make lun a non-disk
device that can be accessed by sg and isn't marked offline?  It can't be
_that_ difficult.  And btw, what tools actually need that access, does some
have pointers to a tarball - I really wonder what they do.

Yeah, Enterprise storage.  I wonder why people trust EMC to even design
a loo cover.