On 06/13/2017 01:08 AM, James Smart wrote: > On 5/16/2017 12:59 PM, Roland Dreier wrote: >> On Sun, Mar 5, 2017 at 8:35 AM, Sebastian Herbszt <herb...@gmx.de> wrote: >>> Just like Hannes I do favour integration. I guess it could be >>> comparable to qla2xxx + tcm_qla2xxx, lpfc + lpfc_scst and >>> lpfc + tcm_lpfc. That approach might even help Bart with his >>> target driver unification if he didn't give up on that topic. >> Resurrecting this old topic - sorry for not seeing this go by initially. >> >> For context, I have a lot of experience debugging the qla2xxx target >> code - we did a lot of work to get error/exception paths correct. >> Basic FC target support is pretty straightforward but handling SAN log >> in / log out events and other strange things that initiators do took a >> lot of effort. >> >> Anyway, my feeling is that the integration of tcm_qla2xxx and qla2xxx >> was overall a net negative. Having the target driver grafted onto the >> side of an already-complex driver that has a bunch of code not >> relevant to the target (SCSI error handling, logging into and timing >> out remote target ports, etc) made the code harder to debug and harder >> to get right. >> >> Of course I'm in favor of making common code really common. So >> certainly we should have a common library of SLI-4 code that both the >> initiator and target driver share. And if there is more commonality, >> that's great. But any code similar to "if (initiator) ... else ..." >> is really suspect to me - grepping for "qla_ini_mode_enabled" shows >> great examples like >> >> ... >> >> Handling "dual mode" (both initiator and target on the same port at >> the same time) is a design challenge, but I don't think the current >> qla2xxx driver is an example of a maintainable way to do that. >> >> (I'm agnostic about what to do about SLI-3 - perhaps the cleanest >> thing to do is split the driver between SLI-4 and SLI-3, and handle >> the initiator and target drivers for those two cases as appropriate) >> >> I'd love to discuss this further and come up with a design that meets >> the concerns about integration but also learns the lessons from >> tcm_qla2xxx. >> >> - R. > > > Thanks for the feedback. I believe you echo many of our concerns as we > look at "merging them into one". I agree with your statements on the > number of if-else roles and know that we made this even more complicated > by the driver doing fc-nvme initiator and fc-nvme target as well. Your > small list of "mode_enabled" hits pales in comparison to a hit list in > the current driver if looking for SCSI initiator support > (LPFC_ENABLE_FCP), NVME initiator support (LPFC_ENABLE_NVME), or NVME > target support (phba->nvmet_support). And that's before adding SCSI > target support. We're also concerned about the discovery engines as > not only are there lots of different paths for the different roles as > well as support for fcoe, but there are a lot of carefully managed > accommodations for various oem and switch environments. It's very > difficult to replicate and retest all these different configurations and > scenarios. > > Here's what I'd like to propose for a direction: > 1) Create an initiator driver and a target driver. For now, initiator > would support both SCSI and NVME initiator. Target would support SCSI > and NVME target. Well, _actually_ you only would need to move the NVMe target functionality into a new driver...
> 2) SLI3 support would be contained only within the initiator driver and > limited to SCSI (as it is today in lpfc). > 3) SLI4 support would be library-ized,so that the code can be shared > between the two drivers. Library-izing SLI-4 means SLI-3 will also be > library-ized. > 4) Discovery support would be librarized so it can be shared. As part of > this effort we will minimally move generic functions from the library to > drivers/scsi/libfc (example: setting RPA payloads, etc). At this time, > the drivers will not attempt to use libfc for discovery. There is too > much sensitive code tied to interlocks with adapter api design that are > visible in the discovery state machine. Use of libfc can be a future, > but for the short term, the goal is a single library for the broadcom > initiator/target drivers. > 5) lpfc will be refactored, addressing concerns that have been desired > for a while. > That all sound reasonable. > > To start this effort, I'd like a bcmlpfc directory to be made within the > drivers staging tree. The directory would be populated with the efct > driver and a copy of the existing lpfc driver. Work can then commence > on refactoring lpfc and creating the libraries and integrating the > libraries into both drivers. As lpfc is updated in the main tree, > patches would be posted to the staging version of lpfc to keep them on par. > Ok. > > Questions: > a) How best to deal with overlapping pci id's ? E.g. if we do (1) and > we have an initiator and target driver, there is a lot of adapters that > are fully functional for target operation, but were sold as primarily an > initiator adapter. How could we manage target mode enablement without > code mod or hard pci id partitioning ? I know individual pci > unbind/bind could work, but its been frowned upon as a long term option. > Same thing goes for module parameters to select which ports do what role. > That indeed is a problem. Ideally we should be able to set the required mode on a per-port base; having it per PCI device might be too coarse. Unless you represent each port as a PCI function; not sure if that's the case, though. If we were to allow to set the mode on a per-port base we could easily implement kernel parameters like fctarget=WWPN and/or fcinitiator=WWPN; NVMe could be treated similarly. And have a config option specifying if the default FC mode should be initiator or target. With that we could configure the ports during boot-up and would avoid the rebinding. > b) Assuming we have the lpfc copy in the bcmlpfc directory in the > staging tree: are there any issues with having a version of lpfc in the > main tree and another in the staging tree ? For many reasons, I'd > like to keep the name lpfc on the initiator driver in the staging tree. > But is that possible ? I assume we would need to develop in the staging > tree as a new name and pci id space separate from the base driver, and > we can rename the staging driver to the lpfc name when it merges into > the main kernel and replaces the existing driver. > Why not splitting the _existing_ lpfc driver along the above lines, and keep the new target mode driver in staging? That would be 'just' be a refactoring of the current lpfc driver, which would be fully in keeping with the existing rules. Hence I don't think that it would require to have the initiator driver in staging, too. And I do think that staging drivers can use library function from 'mainline' drivers. Unless you want to go for a full split, and remove SLI-4 functionality from the existing lpfc driver. But then you'll be having a issue with driver renaming etc. Not sure if I would want to go that route. Cheers, Hannes
