Re: Asynchronous scsi scanning

From: Peter Jones
Date: Thu May 17 2007 - 18:24:50 EST


Matthew Wilcox wrote:
On Tue, May 15, 2007 at 12:26:29PM +0100, Simon Arlott wrote:
I've already suggested a sysfs attribute - or something equivalent - would
be much better. It's just one function that a user might want to run multiple
times (e.g. after adding scsi devices?) - why should loading a module be used
for this?

It's easy to suggest a sysfs attribute. What you've failed to do is
suggest the pathname of the sysfs attribute, the contents of it, or the
semantics of it (read-only? read-write? write-only? blocking?)

My personal favourite would be to add a new verb to /proc/scsi/scsi, but
James dislikes that idea.

I'd *really* like to hear from distro people. What is the most
convenient way for you to implement "load all the scsi modules, then
wait until all devices are found"? James and I had thought that loading
a new module would be the easiest way for you, but it seems inconvenient
for you.

Basically we're going to wind up listening for SUBSYSTEM=block hotplug events. What would be helpful is if /sys/block/$foo/device/{model,vendor} were populated when we get the event (or, since there are good reasons why they're not, if we got another event afterwards that said they'd been populated).

Even more helpful if there were also sysfs attributes for serial numbers and such from INQUIRY VPD data. That would make probing for the *correct* drive(s) much simpler.

--
Peter
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