[PATCH 3/4] target: Add documentation on the target userspace pass-through driver

[Andy Grover]

Describes the driver and its interface to make it possible for user
programs to back a LIO-exported LUN.

Thanks to Richard W. M. Jones for review, and supplementing this doc
with the first two paragraphs.

Signed-off-by: Andy Grover <agrover@xxxxxxxxxx>
---
 Documentation/target/tcmu-design.txt | 239 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 239 insertions(+)
 create mode 100644 Documentation/target/tcmu-design.txt

diff --git a/Documentation/target/tcmu-design.txt b/Documentation/target/tcmu-design.txt
new file mode 100644
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+TCM Userspace Design
+--------------------
+
+TCM is another name for LIO, an in-kernel iSCSI target (server).
+Existing TCM targets run in the kernel.  TCMU (TCM in Userspace)
+allows userspace programs to be written which act as iSCSI targets.
+This document describes the design.
+
+The existing kernel provides modules for different SCSI transport
+protocols.  TCM also modularizes the data storage.  There are existing
+modules for file, block device, RAM or using another SCSI device as
+storage.  These are called "backstores" or "storage engines".  These
+built-in modules are implemented entirely as kernel code.
+
+Background:
+
+In addition to modularizing the transport protocol used for carrying
+SCSI commands ("fabrics"), the Linux kernel target, LIO, also modularizes
+the actual data storage as well. These are referred to as "backstores"
+or "storage engines". The target comes with backstores that allow a
+file, a block device, RAM, or another SCSI device to be used for the
+local storage needed for the exported SCSI LUN. Like the rest of LIO,
+these are implemented entirely as kernel code.
+
+These backstores cover the most common use cases, but not all. One new
+use case that other non-kernel target solutions, such as tgt, are able
+to support is using Gluster's GLFS or Ceph's RBD as a backstore. The
+target then serves as a translator, allowing initiators to store data
+in these non-traditional networked storage systems, while still only
+using standard protocols themselves.
+
+If the target is a userspace process, supporting these is easy. tgt,
+for example, needs only a small adapter module for each, because the
+modules just use the available userspace libraries for RBD and GLFS.
+
+Adding support for these backstores in LIO is considerably more
+difficult, because LIO is entirely kernel code. Instead of undertaking
+the significant work to port the GLFS or RBD APIs and protocols to the
+kernel, another approach is to create a userspace pass-through
+backstore for LIO, "TCMU".
+
+
+Benefits:
+
+In addition to allowing relatively easy support for RBD and GLFS, TCMU
+will also allow easier development of new backstores. TCMU combines
+with the LIO loopback fabric to become something similar to FUSE
+(Filesystem in Userspace), but at the SCSI layer instead of the
+filesystem layer. A SUSE, if you will.
+
+The disadvantage is there are more distinct components to configure, and
+potentially to malfunction. This is unavoidable, but hopefully not
+fatal if we're careful to keep things as simple as possible.
+
+Design constraints:
+
+- Good performance: high throughput, low latency
+- Cleanly handle if userspace:
+   1) never attaches
+   2) hangs
+   3) dies
+   4) misbehaves
+- Allow future flexibility in user & kernel implementations
+- Be reasonably memory-efficient
+- Simple to configure & run
+- Simple to write a userspace backend
+
+
+Implementation overview:
+
+The core of the TCMU interface is a memory region that is shared
+between kernel and userspace. Within this region is: a control area
+(mailbox); a lockless producer/consumer circular buffer for commands
+to be passed up, and status returned; and an in/out data buffer area.
+
+TCMU uses the pre-existing UIO subsystem. UIO allows device driver
+development in userspace, and this is conceptually very close to the
+TCMU use case, except instead of a physical device, TCMU implements a
+memory-mapped layout designed for SCSI commands. Using UIO also
+benefits TCMU by handling device introspection (e.g. a way for
+userspace to determine how large the shared region is) and signaling
+mechanisms in both directions.
+
+There are no embedded pointers in the memory region. Everything is
+expressed as an offset from the region's starting address. This allows
+the ring to still work if the user process dies and is restarted with
+the region mapped at a different virtual address.
+
+See target_core_user.h for the struct definitions.
+
+The Mailbox:
+
+The mailbox is always at the start of the shared memory region, and
+contains a version, details about the starting offset and size of the
+command ring, and head and tail pointers to be used by the kernel and
+userspace (respectively) to put commands on the ring, and indicate
+when the commands are completed.
+
+version - 1 (userspace should abort if otherwise)
+flags - none yet defined.
+cmdr_off - The offset of the start of the command ring from the start
+of the memory region, to account for the mailbox size.
+cmdr_size - The size of the command ring. This does *not* need to be a
+power of two.
+cmd_head - Modified by the kernel to indicate when a command has been
+placed on the ring.
+cmd_tail - Modified by userspace to indicate when it has completed
+processing of a command.
+
+The Command Ring:
+
+Commands are placed on the ring by the kernel incrementing
+mailbox.cmd_head by the size of the command, modulo cmdr_size, and
+then signaling userspace via uio_event_notify(). Once the command is
+completed, userspace updates mailbox.cmd_tail in the same way and
+signals the kernel via a 4-byte write(). When cmd_head equals
+cmd_tail, the ring is empty -- no commands are currently waiting to be
+processed by userspace.
+
+TCMU commands start with a common header containing "len_op", a 32-bit
+value that stores the length, as well as the opcode in the lowest
+unused bits. Currently only two opcodes are defined, TCMU_OP_PAD and
+TCMU_OP_CMD. When userspace encounters a command with PAD opcode, it
+should skip ahead by the bytes in "length". (The kernel inserts PAD
+entries to ensure each CMD entry fits contigously into the circular
+buffer.)
+
+When userspace handles a CMD, it finds the SCSI CDB (Command Data
+Block) via tcmu_cmd_entry.req.cdb_off. This is an offset from the
+start of the overall shared memory region, not the entry. The data
+in/out buffers are accessible via tht req.iov[] array. Note that
+each iov.iov_base is also an offset from the start of the region.
+
+TCMU currently does not support BIDI operations.
+
+When completing a command, userspace sets rsp.scsi_status, and
+rsp.sense_buffer if necessary. Userspace then increments
+mailbox.cmd_tail by entry.hdr.length (mod cmdr_size) and signals the
+kernel via the UIO method, a 4-byte write to the file descriptor.
+
+The Data Area:
+
+This is shared-memory space after the command ring. The organization
+of this area is not defined in the TCMU interface, and userspace
+should access only the parts referenced by pending iovs.
+
+
+Device Discovery:
+
+Other devices may be using UIO besides TCMU. Unrelated user processes
+may also be handling different sets of TCMU devices. TCMU userspace
+processes must find their devices by scanning sysfs
+class/uio/uio*/name. For TCMU devices, these names will be of the
+format:
+
+tcm-user/<hba_num>/<device_name>/<subtype>/<path>
+
+where "tcm-user" is common for all TCMU-backed UIO devices. <hba_num>
+and <device_name> allow userspace to find the device's path in the
+kernel target's configfs tree. Assuming the usual mount point, it is
+found at:
+
+/sys/kernel/config/target/core/user_<hba_num>/<device_name>
+
+This location contains attributes such as "hw_block_size", that
+userspace needs to know for correct operation.
+
+<subtype> will be a userspace-process-unique string to identify the
+TCMU device as expecting to be backed by a certain handler, and <path>
+will be an additional handler-specific string for the user process to
+configure the device, if needed. The name cannot contain ':', due to
+LIO limitations.
+
+For all devices so discovered, the user handler opens /dev/uioX and
+calls mmap():
+
+mmap(NULL, size, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_SHARED, fd, 0)
+
+where size must be equal to the value read from
+/sys/class/uio/uioX/maps/map0/size.
+
+
+Device Events:
+
+If a new device is added or removed, a notification will be broadcast
+over netlink, using a generic netlink family name of "TCM-USER" and a
+multicast group named "config". This will include the UIO name as
+described in the previous section, as well as the UIO minor
+number. This should allow userspace to identify both the UIO device and
+the LIO device, so that after determining the device is supported
+(based on subtype) it can take the appropriate action.
+
+
+Other contingencies:
+
+Userspace handler process never attaches:
+
+- TCMU will post commands, and then abort them after a timeout period
+  (30 seconds.)
+
+Userspace handler process is killed:
+
+- It is still possible to restart and re-connect to TCMU
+  devices. Command ring is preserved. However, after the timeout period,
+  the kernel will abort pending tasks.
+
+Userspace handler process hangs:
+
+- The kernel will abort pending tasks after a timeout period.
+
+Userspace handler process is malicious:
+
+- The process can trivially break the handling of devices it controls,
+  but should not be able to access kernel memory outside its shared
+  memory areas.
+
+
+Writing a user backstore handler:
+
+First, consider instead writing a plugin for tcmu-runner. tcmu-runner
+implements the device enumeration and ring processing, and provides a
+higher-level API to plugin writers. If you're determined to start from
+scratch, it should at least provide working reference code for using
+the user-kernel interface. Multiple unrelated processes can run
+concurrently with disjoint sets of TCMU devices, as long as they
+differentiate "their" devices based on the subtype string.
+
+All SCSI commands that the device receives are presented to userspace
+via the command ring.
+
+However, in order to reduce the amount of boilerplate code needed,
+handlers can opt to complete commands with CHECK CONDITION: INVALID
+COMMAND OPERATION CODE and TCMU will attempt to emulate it using LIO's
+in-kernel support. See tcmu-runner for an example of this.
+
+Finally, be careful to return codes as defined by the SCSI
+specifications. These are different than some values defined in the
+scsi/scsi.h include file. For example, CHECK CONDITION's status code
+is 2, not 1.
-- 
1.9.3

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