Re: Fibre channel network interfaces + Linux SAN

Re: Fibre channel network interfaces + Linux SAN

[James Smart]

Scott,

Re: IP networking on FC
It is possible, and Emulex has had product in the past for this. However, we've
never had enough interest to warrant the work needed to get it up on 2.6.
In general, there's very little interest in it anymore.

Re: LVM on FC
The LVM on FC scsi disks should be normal. The more interesting part is the boot
part. Boot support means getting the expansion rom driver configured properly
(whether that be BIOS, EFI, or OpenBoot). If you go to the Emulex support/download
page, and look for firmware for your adapter, there is documentation on the setting
boot devices, etc. You will need to be careful that the disk is either used on its
own or as a mirror, it can't be used as a raid set.  Further boot specifics should
defer to grub (or your favorite boot loader) and LVM.  Outside the expansion rom
driver setup, the fact that it's FC should not matter, and it should look like a
normal scsi disk.   And now the bad news... the LP8000 is rather old, it may be EOL'd,
so you may not find the latest boot firmware, and you would be stuck with whatever
is on the adapter, or find a newer one.


-- james s




Scott Edwards wrote:
> Two things I'm trying to solve with my fc hardware.  How do I enable these
> for IP networking, and how do I offer say lvm logical volumes behind Linux
> as a SAN? I'd like nodes to be bootable and offer specific volumes as their
> disks.  I'm using 2.6.28

Fibre channel network interfaces + Linux SAN

[Scott Edwards]

Two things I'm trying to solve with my fc hardware.  How do I enable these 
for IP networking, and how do I offer say lvm logical volumes behind Linux 
as a SAN? I'd like nodes to be bootable and offer specific volumes as their 
disks.  I'm using 2.6.28 

As for networking, I vaguely remember setting up IPv4 on fibre channel some 
time ago.  So far I have two hosts connected to a Compaq Storage Works FC 
arbitrated loop.  Each host has Online for 
/sys/class/fc_host/hostN/port_state.  I can't find the network device in 
/proc/net/dev or via ifconfig -a. 

riddle: 2.6.18-5-xen-vserver-686
00:0a.0 Fibre Channel [0c04]: Emulex Corporation LP8000 Fibre Channel Host 
Adapter [10df:f800] (rev 02) 

armada: 2.6.18-5-vserver-686
01:0b.0 Fibre Channel [0c04]: Emulex Corporation LP8000 Fibre Channel Host 
Adapter [10df:f800] (rev 02) 

Both have lpfc loaded (if you didn't guess that by now).  I thought there 
was a more generic ip<->fc net driver. I did find net/802/fc.c using fc%d as 
the net device, and lpfc.ko is the only module I've found containing fc%d. 

modinfo lpfc seems to apply to the fc layer only.  I did find some outdated 
Emulex documentation about configuring this hardware for a network 
interface. 

Any comments? 

Thanks, 


Scott
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