Hi -
I am looking into adding iSCSI install support to anaconda.
Any opinions on supporting install from iSCSI, such as CDROM (sr) or local disk (sd)?
This seems useful in some cases, though it is not required to suppport installing to iSCSI disks: a network, local scsi, or ide install method could still be used.
Supporting this means we would have to support iSCSI in the stage1 (loader/initrd) portion rather than in stage2 of the installation.
-- Patrick Mansfield
On Fri, 2005-10-21 at 09:30 -0700, Patrick Mansfield wrote:
I am looking into adding iSCSI install support to anaconda.
Any opinions on supporting install from iSCSI, such as CDROM (sr) or local disk (sd)?
This seems useful in some cases, though it is not required to suppport installing to iSCSI disks: a network, local scsi, or ide install method could still be used.
While it might be useful eventually, I don't think it's something to really be concerned with for now. There are plenty of perfectly reasonable ways to get access to installation trees now and I'm not sure that I really want to add support for more given the impact on testing that it causes :)
Jeremy
On Fri, Oct 21, 2005 at 05:22:34PM -0400, Jeremy Katz wrote:
While it might be useful eventually, I don't think it's something to really be concerned with for now. There are plenty of perfectly reasonable ways to get access to installation trees now and I'm not sure that I really want to add support for more given the impact on testing that it causes :)
It is not a new installation method, it is similar to adding a new HBA driver / module. I hope you don't have to test installation via all the existing SCSI HBA drivers in the initrd, you would go insane. :)
I personally prefer a network install over CD.
But if all you have is iSCSI (no nfs/ftp/http server) how are you going to install? That is not an unreasonable setup, especially if you have an iSCSI attached CDROM.
-- Patrick Mansfield
On Fri, 2005-10-21 at 14:55 -0700, Patrick Mansfield wrote:
On Fri, Oct 21, 2005 at 05:22:34PM -0400, Jeremy Katz wrote:
While it might be useful eventually, I don't think it's something to really be concerned with for now. There are plenty of perfectly reasonable ways to get access to installation trees now and I'm not sure that I really want to add support for more given the impact on testing that it causes :)
It is not a new installation method, it is similar to adding a new HBA driver / module. I hope you don't have to test installation via all the existing SCSI HBA drivers in the initrd, you would go insane. :)
The fact that iSCSI uses the SCSI layer is purely an implementation detail, IMHO... the fact that it requires a lot of configuration about the target makes it much more like a network install type and FTP vs HTTP vs NFS are different installation methods
I personally prefer a network install over CD.
But if all you have is iSCSI (no nfs/ftp/http server) how are you going to install? That is not an unreasonable setup, especially if you have an iSCSI attached CDROM.
I don't think that people in the real world have no nfs/ftp/http server. :)
Jeremy
On Fri, Oct 21, 2005 at 05:56:50PM -0400, Jeremy Katz wrote:
On Fri, 2005-10-21 at 14:55 -0700, Patrick Mansfield wrote:
On Fri, Oct 21, 2005 at 05:22:34PM -0400, Jeremy Katz wrote:
While it might be useful eventually, I don't think it's something to really be concerned with for now. There are plenty of perfectly reasonable ways to get access to installation trees now and I'm not sure that I really want to add support for more given the impact on testing that it causes :)
It is not a new installation method, it is similar to adding a new HBA driver / module. I hope you don't have to test installation via all the existing SCSI HBA drivers in the initrd, you would go insane. :)
The fact that iSCSI uses the SCSI layer is purely an implementation detail, IMHO... the fact that it requires a lot of configuration about the target makes it much more like a network install type and FTP vs HTTP vs NFS are different installation methods
It might require setup unlike current SCSI drivers and HBA's, but that does not mean we should not support installs from it.
iSCSI should be treated like just another transport like IDE, SATA, firewire, USB, SAS etc.
There could be low end PC's in the future that are all iSCSI / ethernet vs current transports for cost reasons, maybe on other hardware too save space.
-- Patrick Mansfield
On Mon, 2005-10-24 at 13:43 -0700, Patrick Mansfield wrote:
On Fri, Oct 21, 2005 at 05:56:50PM -0400, Jeremy Katz wrote:
On Fri, 2005-10-21 at 14:55 -0700, Patrick Mansfield wrote:
On Fri, Oct 21, 2005 at 05:22:34PM -0400, Jeremy Katz wrote:
While it might be useful eventually, I don't think it's something to really be concerned with for now. There are plenty of perfectly reasonable ways to get access to installation trees now and I'm not sure that I really want to add support for more given the impact on testing that it causes :)
It is not a new installation method, it is similar to adding a new HBA driver / module. I hope you don't have to test installation via all the existing SCSI HBA drivers in the initrd, you would go insane. :)
The fact that iSCSI uses the SCSI layer is purely an implementation detail, IMHO... the fact that it requires a lot of configuration about the target makes it much more like a network install type and FTP vs HTTP vs NFS are different installation methods
It might require setup unlike current SCSI drivers and HBA's, but that does not mean we should not support installs from it.
iSCSI should be treated like just another transport like IDE, SATA, firewire, USB, SAS etc.
I'd agree if it were just another transport. The unfortunate fact of the matter, though, is that it's not. Otherwise, there wouldn't be any work which needed doing to support installing to or from it :-)
Jeremy
anaconda-devel@lists.fedoraproject.org
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Jeremy Katz -
Patrick Mansfield