On 1/11/2010 5:40 AM, Ran Jack Meng wrote:
> Hi Torrey,
>
> Most things in concern is in documentations, please kindly refer to my
> answers inline.
> Torrey McMahon wrote:
>> Hi Mark and company.
>>
>> How will the installer, and the customer, know that they can't use
>> the iSCSI boot device as dump device? How does that get squared away
>> with swap devices being the default dump device? Will dumpadm detect
>> that the system is using iSCSI and produce an error?
> Currently the installer is unaware of this part. Customer can find
> this piece of information on the administration guide, located at
> http://wikis.sun.com/display/OpenSolarisInfo/Configuring+iSCSI+Boot+for+x86+Systems
>
>
> http://wikis.sun.com/display/OpenSolarisInfo/Configuring+iSCSI+Boot+for+SPARC+Systems
>
>
> It is recommended to let administrator decide/configure dedicated dump
> device in the guide, and by default the dump device is configured as a
> partition/vol on the iSCSI disk for the case where no local storage is
> available (commonly seen in iSCSI boot environment). dumpadm doesn't
> produce errors for such a configuration, and it also will introduce
> extra work/dependency to make it aware of iSCSI transport.
Let me see if I have this straight.....
* It's not supported to use the iSCSI boot volume as a dump device
under any circumstances
* By default the dump device is placed on the boot volume
* Ergo, by default, an iSCSI boot device will have dump placed on
the boot volume
* This project is not going to change the installer or dumpadm
command to prevent this from happening
* You're hoping the customer reads the docs and changes it manually
Right?
>>
>> What rev of SPARC OBP will support this? Will the installer be able
>> to differentiate and warn the user they're supported or not based on
>> OBP rev or, on x86, the NIC in the system?
>>
> The prerequisites for SPARC is documented at,
> http://wikis.sun.com/display/OpenSolarisInfo/Configuring+iSCSI+Boot+for+SPARC+Systems.
>
>
> Specially, the obp version is 4.3.2 and can be confirmed by the
> presence of 'show-iscsi' command in 'OK' prompt.
> Unfortunately the differentiation in installer is not present in
> neither opensolaris (caiman) installer nor the 'legacy' installer for
> SXCE and S10. There are some technical problems, especially on x86, to
> determine the capability because of the lacking of unified OS-level
> interface to check with NIC/firmware from different vendors (unless to
> perform an iSCSI boot).
> Therefore administrators need to check the prerequisites section in
> administration guides listed above and confirm they're met before
> setting up an iSCSI boot environment.
This one I'm more ok with as, in theory, you can't set up an iSCSI boot
device if you don't meet the prerequisites in the first place. You'll
just get an error saying it doesn't work.
