In my continuing series of exploring the m0n0wall distros (AskoziaPBX, m0n0wall, pfsense, and FreeNAS), I'm trying to setup iscsi with FreeNAS.
So far it hasn't worked. I tried the freely downloadable but closed source iSCSI software from Studio Network Solutions for the Mac OS X, but the system kept freezing up. Now I'm trying open-iscsi on ubuntu.
aptitude install open-iscsi iscsiadm -m discovery --type sendtargets --portal <iSCSI host IP>:3260 iscsiadm --mode node iscsiadm --mode node --targetname iqn.1994-04.org.netbsd.iscsi-target:target0 --portal 192.168.0.183:3260 --login
dmesg output:
[429060.812000] Loading iSCSI transport class v2.0-724. [429060.848000] iscsi: registered transport (tcp) [429060.944000] iscsi: registered transport (iser) [429483.192000] scsi4 : iSCSI Initiator over TCP/IP [429483.492000] scsi 4:0:0:0: Direct-Access NetBSD NetBSD iSCSI 0 PQ: 0 ANSI: 3 [429483.492000] scsi 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg1 type 0 [429483.520000] SCSI device sda: 2048 512-byte hdwr sectors (1 MB) [429483.520000] sda: Write Protect is off [429483.520000] sda: Mode Sense: 0e 00 00 08 [429483.520000] sda: got wrong page [429483.520000] sda: assuming drive cache: write through [429483.524000] SCSI device sda: 2048 512-byte hdwr sectors (1 MB) [429483.524000] sda: Write Protect is off [429483.524000] sda: Mode Sense: 0e 00 00 08 [429483.524000] sda: got wrong page [429483.524000] sda: assuming drive cache: write through [429483.524000] sda: unknown partition table [429483.528000] sd 4:0:0:0: Attached scsi disk sda
COOL!
fdisk /dev/sda
mke2fs -j /dev/sda1
mkdir /mnt/iscsi
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/iscsi/
It WORKS!!! And it is surprisingly fast:
# hdparm -tT /dev/sda1/dev/sda1: Timing cached reads: 1286 MB in 2.00 seconds = 642.95 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 98 MB in 2.33 seconds = 42.13 MB/sec
Note: I have 1GB of memory in the machine, and the machine is using an onboard realtek gigabit ethernet adapter (re0 - RealTek 8169S Single-chip Gigabit Ethernet). The drive inside is a real SCSI drive (SEAGATE ST39236LWV 0010), using an Adaptec PCI-X card in a 32-bit PCI slot (ahc0: <Adaptec 29160 Ultra160 SCSI adapter> port 0xf400-0xf4ff mem 0xfbffa000-0xfbffafff irq 16 at device 13.0 on pci0). The machine is an AOpen XC-Cube. Unfortunately, this machine has a low-efficiency power supply, so at idle with only one hard drive, the system still consumes at least 57 watts. :-(
I have to admit, I'm already thinking about using these devices as members of RAID sets! Since NFS doesn't work out of the box on FreeNSD (it does work, but you have to hack the config file), the iSCSI initiator makes it a really awesome solution.
Unfortunately, when I try the same steps on an ASUS Terminator C3 running FreeNas - the entire process gets messed up. My guess is that the problems stem from the fact the machine is running a gigabit ethernet card in a PCI slot. However, I don't see how the AOpen device would do any better with the SCSI card in a PCI slot. There must be some heavy duty RAM caching going on I'm not aware of - as a buffer between the drive and the nic.
hdparm -tT /dev/sdb2/dev/sdb2: Timing cached reads: 1242 MB in 2.00 seconds = 621.23 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 28 MB in 3.01 seconds = 9.30 MB/sec
Actually, believe it or not I just ran e2fsck on /dev/sdb2 and now its running fine. I was getting an IO error earlier, but the e2fsck fixed it. Sweet. So I guess you can run FreeNAS iSCSI on the ASUS Terminator C3 which is very cool. Just be aware that you'll want to put a gigabit card into a pci card slot, which will only give you 300Mbits of bandwidth, but apparently that is enough for the service to operate.
Thanks to