[RFC] The future of iscsitarget

[Tim Gardner]

On 05/19/2011 10:26 AM, Leann Ogasawara wrote:
> On Thu, 2011-05-19 at 16:43 +0200, Stefan Bader wrote:
>> We currently carry iscsitarget as one of our ubuntu specific modules. Due to the
>> compile breaking for Oneiric, I was looking into this. I found that, at least
>> starting with Maverick, there is a source package iscsitarget which also
>> produces a dkms module. The code of both is nearly identical, but have already
>> diverged due to fixups done to the kernel side while the dkms version just
>> stayed at the last upstream version.
>>
>> First question would be whether we really need iscsitarget at all as there is an
>> in kernel scsi target framework[1]. The answer may be yes, because people
>> (still) use it.
>>
>> But then it is not very efficient to provide the kernel module in the kernel
>> itself and a dkms package. I would tend to say it should be removed from the
>> kernel tree and only be provided by dkms as then all the code from the
>> iscsitarget project is in one package, the module should not be important during
>> installation as it only allows to use the host as a target and when fixing the
>> dkms build in the iscsitarget package, the changes maybe flow back via debian to
>> the original project (though it looked a bit like there has been no
>> activity/changes since end of last year).
>>
>> What would be other peoples thoughts on this?
>
> I'd be in favor of the DKMS package thus allowing us to drop it from the
> Ubuntu kernel.  This has been our suggested policy for out of tree
> drivers we've carried in the past.
>
> Thanks,
> Leann
>
>> [1] http://lwn.net/Articles/424004/
>
>
>

I'm good with that, especially since the in-kernel SCSI target support 
is in a state of flux.

rtg
-- 
Tim Gardner tim.gardner at canonical.com