Re: Integration of SCST in the mainstream Linux kernel

Linus Torvalds
2008-02-04T23:28:39Z

On Mon, 4 Feb 2008, Jeff Garzik wrote:
>
> For years I have been hoping that someone will invent a simple protocol (w/
> strong auth) that can transit ATA and SCSI commands and responses. Heck, it
> would be almost trivial if the kernel had a TLS/SSL implementation.

Why would you want authorization? If you don't use IP (just ethernet
framing), then 99% of the time the solution is to just trust the subnet.

So most people would never want TLS/SSL, and the ones that *do* want it
would probably also want IP routing, so you'd actually be better off with
a separate higher-level bridging protocol rather than have TLS/SSL as part
of the actual packet protocol.

So don't add complexity. The beauty of ATA-over-ethernet is exactly that
it's simple and straightforward.

(Simple and straightforward is also nice for actually creating devices
that are the targets of this. I just *bet* that an iSCSI target device
probably needs two orders of magnitude more CPU power than a simple AoE
thing that can probably be done in an FPGA with no real software at all).

Whatever. We have now officially gotten totally off topic ;)

Linus