Importing iSCSI target from NetBSD

[Maxim Sobolev]

Maxim Sobolev wrote:
> Scott Long wrote:
>> F. Senault wrote:
>>
>>> Monday, May 29, 2006, 10:39:40 AM, you wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>
>>>
>>>> I wonder if anybody has any objections to importing iSCSI target daemon
>>>> from NetBSD (Intel) into the base.
>>>
>>>
>>> Mh, I'm currently doing that, with the help of the author (Alistair G.
>>> Crooks), under the form of a port.  Alistair just provided me a new
>>> version I'm testing, and I was planning to submit the port shortly.
>>> (It seems to work quite well).
>>>
>>> Now, if it's better to include it into the base, so much the better.
>>> Alistair was kind enough to take into consideration my suggestions,
>>> so, now, the daemon compiles and works under FreeBSD 6 (tested lightly
>>> with and i386 and more intensively witn an amd64).
>>>
>>> The work in progress is here :
>>>
>>> http://www.lacave.net/~fred/iscsi/
>>>
>>
>> If it's not going to be integrated into the existing target 
>> infrastructure then I'd prefer it to be a port.  Ultimately it
>> would be nice for it to be part of the base system, though.
> 
> Well, arguably we may want to support both ways. Having iSCSI target 
> running in userland completely has some serious advantages (security is 
> a big one for example, as you can run daemon easily as unprivileged 
> process). The kernel iSCSI target only makes sense for really 
> performance-constrained cases, and hopefully sooner or later we will be 
> able to narrow the gap by utilizing zero-copy interfaces.

P.S. Just to make it clear - just consider running iSCSI over 100MBps 
link or even a slower WAN links, which I think covers very large market 
for this technology now. Performance constrain imposed by running in 
userland is unlikely to be an issue at all.

-Maxim