Re: NAA breakage

[Chris Boot <bootc@bootc.net>]

On 11/09/2011 12:52, Martin Svec wrote:
> thanks a lot for your comments. Clearly there was a misunderstanding 
> of who is the vendor that defines what is "vendor-specific" in case of 
> LIO. Of course, it is easy for me to fix my userspace code to generate 
> serial numbers without these issues. But I suggest to enforce 
> vpd_unit_serial restrictions in configfs code because rtslib/lio-utils 
> is just a referential userspace implementation, not a kernel ABI.

I feel it's time to add my 2 cents to this discussion. A vendor-specific 
identifier in my mind could very well be what Martin uses it for, in my 
opinion - at least according to SPC-3. If the LIO stack cannot handle 
such use of identifiers the configfs code should refuse to accept such 
an identifier. If for example the LIO code only creates a valid NAA/WWN 
from a hex string of a certain length, it should only accept a hex 
string of that length. It should not be a requirement to exactly follow 
what rtslib does in every case.

Of course the way I see it the vendor specific identifier doesn't 
necessarily have anything to do with the NAA/WWN, so it would be nice if 
one could set both a WWN as a hex string of the correct length and 
format, and a vendor-specific string in a mostly freeform manner as long 
as it abides by SPC-3. The WWN shouldn't necessarily be generated from 
the vendor identifier.

Chris