xref: /freebsd/sys/cam/ctl/README.ctl.txt (revision 59c8e88e72633afbc47a4ace0d2170d00d51f7dc)
1
2CTL - CAM Target Layer Description
3
4Revision 1.4 (December 29th, 2011)
5Ken Merry <ken@FreeBSD.org>
6
7Table of Contents:
8=================
9
10Introduction
11Features
12Configuring and Running CTL
13Revision 1.N Changes
14To Do List
15Code Roadmap
16Userland Commands
17
18Introduction:
19============
20
21CTL is a disk, processor and cdrom device emulation subsystem originally
22written for Copan Systems under Linux starting in 2003.  It has been
23shipping in Copan (now SGI) products since 2005.
24
25It was ported to FreeBSD in 2008, and thanks to an agreement between SGI
26(who acquired Copan's assets in 2010) and Spectra Logic in 2010, CTL is
27available under a BSD-style license.  The intent behind the agreement was
28that Spectra would work to get CTL into the FreeBSD tree.
29
30Features:
31========
32
33 - Disk, processor and cdrom device emulation.
34 - Tagged queueing
35 - SCSI task attribute support (ordered, head of queue, simple tags)
36 - SCSI implicit command ordering support.  (e.g. if a read follows a mode
37   select, the read will be blocked until the mode select completes.)
38 - Full task management support (abort, LUN reset, target reset, etc.)
39 - Support for multiple ports
40 - Support for multiple simultaneous initiators
41 - Support for multiple simultaneous backing stores
42 - Support for VMWare VAAI: COMPARE AND WRITE, XCOPY, WRITE SAME and
43   UNMAP commands
44 - Support for Microsoft ODX: POPULATE TOKEN/WRITE USING TOKEN, WRITE SAME
45   and UNMAP commands
46 - Persistent reservation support
47 - Mode sense/select support
48 - Error injection support
49 - High Availability clustering support with ALUA
50 - All I/O handled in-kernel, no userland context switch overhead.
51
52Configuring and Running CTL:
53===========================
54
55 - Add 'device ctl' to your kernel configuration file or load the module.
56
57 - If you're running with a 8Gb or 4Gb Qlogic FC board, add
58   'options ISP_TARGET_MODE' to your kernel config file. 'device ispfw' or
59   loading the ispfw module is also recommended.
60
61 - Rebuild and install a new kernel.
62
63 - Reboot with the new kernel.
64
65 - To add a LUN with the RAM disk backend:
66
67	ctladm create -b ramdisk -s 10485760000000000000
68	ctladm port -o on
69
70 - You should now see the CTL disk LUN through camcontrol devlist:
71
72scbus6 on ctl2cam0 bus 0:
73<FREEBSD CTLDISK 0001>             at scbus6 target 1 lun 0 (da24,pass32)
74<>                                 at scbus6 target -1 lun -1 ()
75
76   This is visible through the CTL CAM SIM.  This allows using CTL without
77   any physical hardware.  You should be able to issue any normal SCSI
78   commands to the device via the pass(4)/da(4) devices.
79
80   If any target-capable HBAs are in the system (e.g. isp(4)), and have
81   target mode enabled, you should now also be able to see the CTL LUNs via
82   that target interface.
83
84   Note that all CTL LUNs are presented to all frontends.  There is no
85   LUN masking, or separate, per-port configuration.
86
87 - Note that the ramdisk backend is a "fake" ramdisk.  That is, it is
88   backed by a small amount of RAM that is used for all I/O requests.  This
89   is useful for performance testing, but not for any data integrity tests.
90
91 - To add a LUN with the block/file backend:
92
93	truncate -s +1T myfile
94	ctladm create -b block -o file=myfile
95	ctladm port -o on
96
97 - You can also see a list of LUNs and their backends like this:
98
99# ctladm devlist
100LUN Backend       Size (Blocks)   BS Serial Number    Device ID
101  0 block            2147483648  512 MYSERIAL   0     MYDEVID   0
102  1 block            2147483648  512 MYSERIAL   1     MYDEVID   1
103  2 block            2147483648  512 MYSERIAL   2     MYDEVID   2
104  3 block            2147483648  512 MYSERIAL   3     MYDEVID   3
105  4 block            2147483648  512 MYSERIAL   4     MYDEVID   4
106  5 block            2147483648  512 MYSERIAL   5     MYDEVID   5
107  6 block            2147483648  512 MYSERIAL   6     MYDEVID   6
108  7 block            2147483648  512 MYSERIAL   7     MYDEVID   7
109  8 block            2147483648  512 MYSERIAL   8     MYDEVID   8
110  9 block            2147483648  512 MYSERIAL   9     MYDEVID   9
111 10 block            2147483648  512 MYSERIAL  10     MYDEVID  10
112 11 block            2147483648  512 MYSERIAL  11     MYDEVID  11
113
114 - You can see the LUN type and backing store for block/file backend LUNs
115   like this:
116
117# ctladm devlist -v
118LUN Backend       Size (Blocks)   BS Serial Number    Device ID
119  0 block            2147483648  512 MYSERIAL   0     MYDEVID   0
120      lun_type=0
121      num_threads=14
122      file=testdisk0
123  1 block            2147483648  512 MYSERIAL   1     MYDEVID   1
124      lun_type=0
125      num_threads=14
126      file=testdisk1
127  2 block            2147483648  512 MYSERIAL   2     MYDEVID   2
128      lun_type=0
129      num_threads=14
130      file=testdisk2
131  3 block            2147483648  512 MYSERIAL   3     MYDEVID   3
132      lun_type=0
133      num_threads=14
134      file=testdisk3
135  4 block            2147483648  512 MYSERIAL   4     MYDEVID   4
136      lun_type=0
137      num_threads=14
138      file=testdisk4
139  5 block            2147483648  512 MYSERIAL   5     MYDEVID   5
140      lun_type=0
141      num_threads=14
142      file=testdisk5
143  6 block            2147483648  512 MYSERIAL   6     MYDEVID   6
144      lun_type=0
145      num_threads=14
146      file=testdisk6
147  7 block            2147483648  512 MYSERIAL   7     MYDEVID   7
148      lun_type=0
149      num_threads=14
150      file=testdisk7
151  8 block            2147483648  512 MYSERIAL   8     MYDEVID   8
152      lun_type=0
153      num_threads=14
154      file=testdisk8
155  9 block            2147483648  512 MYSERIAL   9     MYDEVID   9
156      lun_type=0
157      num_threads=14
158      file=testdisk9
159 10 ramdisk                   0    0 MYSERIAL   0     MYDEVID   0
160      lun_type=3
161 11 ramdisk     204800000000000  512 MYSERIAL   1     MYDEVID   1
162      lun_type=0
163
164Revision 1.4 Changes
165====================
166 - Added in the second HA mode (where CTL does the data transfers instead
167   of having data transfers done below CTL), and abstracted out the Copan
168   HA API.
169
170 - Fixed the phantom device problem in the CTL CAM SIM and improved the
171   CAM SIM to automatically trigger a rescan when the port is enabled and
172   disabled.
173
174 - Made the number of threads in the block backend configurable via sysctl,
175   loader tunable and the ctladm command line.  (You can now specify
176   -o num_threads=4 when creating a LUN with ctladm create.)
177
178 - Fixed some LUN selection issues in ctlstat(8) and allowed for selection
179   of LUN numbers up to 1023.
180
181 - General cleanup.
182
183 - This version intended for public release.
184
185Revision 1.3 Changes
186====================
187 - Added descriptor sense support to CTL.  It can be enabled through the
188   control mode page (10), but is disabled by default.
189
190 - Improved error injection support.  The number of errors that can be
191   injected with 'ctladm inject' has been increased, and any arbitrary
192   sense data may now be injected as well.
193
194 - The port infrastructure has been revamped.  Individual ports and types
195   of ports may now be enabled and disabled from the command line.  ctladm
196   now has the ability to set the WWNN and WWPN for each port.
197
198 - The block backend can now send multiple I/Os to backing files.  Multiple
199   writes are only allowed for ZFS, but multiple readers are allowed for
200   any filesystem.
201
202 - The block and ramdisk backends now support setting the LUN blocksize.
203   There are some restrictions when the backing device is a block device,
204   but otherwise the blocksize may be set to anything.
205
206Revision 1.2 Changes
207====================
208
209 - CTL initialization process has been revamped.  Instead of using an
210   ad-hoc method, it is now sequenced through SYSINIT() calls.
211
212 - A block/file backend has been added.  This allows using arbitrary files
213   or block devices as a backing store.
214
215 - The userland LUN configuration interface has been completely rewritten.
216   Configuration is now done out of band.
217
218 - The ctladm(8) command line interface has been revamped, and is now
219   similar to camcontrol(8).
220
221To Do List:
222==========
223
224 - Use devstat(9) for CTL's statistics collection.  CTL uses a home-grown
225   statistics collection system that is similar to devstat(9).  ctlstat
226   should be retired in favor of iostat, etc., once aggregation modes are
227   available in iostat to match the behavior of ctlstat -t and dump modes
228   are available to match the behavior of ctlstat -d/ctlstat -J.
229
230 - ZFS ARC backend for CTL.  Since ZFS copies all I/O into the ARC
231   (Adaptive Replacement Cache), running the block/file backend on top of a
232   ZFS-backed zdev or file will involve an extra set of copies.  The
233   optimal solution for backing targets served by CTL with ZFS would be to
234   allocate buffers out of the ARC directly, and DMA to/from them directly.
235   That would eliminate an extra data buffer allocation and copy.
236
237 - Switch CTL over to using CAM CCBs instead of its own union ctl_io.  This
238   will likely require a significant amount of work, but will eliminate
239   another data structure in the stack, more memory allocations, etc.  This
240   will also require changes to the CAM CCB structure to support CTL.
241
242Code Roadmap:
243============
244
245CTL has the concept of pluggable frontend ports and backends.  All
246frontends and backends can be active at the same time.  You can have a
247ramdisk-backed LUN present along side a file backed LUN.
248
249ctl.c:
250-----
251
252This is the core of CTL, where all of the command handlers and a lot of
253other things live.  Yes, it is large.  It started off small and grew to its
254current size over time.  Perhaps it can be split into more files at some
255point.
256
257Here is a roadmap of some of the primary functions in ctl.c.  Starting here
258and following the various leaf functions will show the command flow.
259
260ctl_queue() / ctl_run()	This is where commands from the frontend ports come
261			in.
262
263ctl_queue_sense()	This is only used for non-packetized SCSI.  i.e.
264			parallel SCSI prior to U320 and perhaps U160.
265
266ctl_work_thread() 	This is the primary work thread, and everything gets
267			executed from there.
268
269ctl_scsiio_precheck() 	This where all of the initial checks are done, and I/O
270			is either queued for execution or blocked.
271
272ctl_scsiio() 		This is where the command handler is actually
273			executed.  (See ctl_cmd_table.c for the mapping of
274			SCSI opcode to command handler function.)
275
276ctl_done()		This is the routine called (or ctl_done_lock()) to
277			initiate the command completion process.
278
279ctl_process_done()	This is where command completion actually happens.
280
281ctl.h:
282-----
283
284Basic function declarations and data structures.
285
286ctl_backend.c,
287ctl_backend.h:
288-------------
289
290These files define the basic CTL backend API.  The comments in the header
291explain the API.
292
293ctl_backend_block.c
294-------------------
295
296The block and file backend.  This allows for using a disk or a file as the
297backing store for a LUN.  Multiple threads are started to do I/O to the
298backing device, primarily because the VFS API requires that to get any
299concurrency.
300
301ctl_backend_ramdisk.c:
302---------------------
303
304A "fake" ramdisk backend.  It only allocates a small amount of memory to
305act as a source and sink for reads and writes from an initiator.  Therefore
306it cannot be used for any real data, but it can be used to test for
307throughput.  It can also be used to test initiators' support for extremely
308large LUNs.
309
310ctl_cmd_table.c:
311---------------
312
313This is a table with all 256 possible SCSI opcodes, and command handler
314functions defined for supported opcodes.  It is included in ctl.c.
315
316ctl_debug.h:
317-----------
318
319Simplistic debugging support.
320
321ctl_error.c,
322ctl_error.h:
323-----------
324
325CTL-specific wrappers around the CAM sense building functions.
326
327ctl_frontend.c,
328ctl_frontend.h:
329--------------
330
331These files define the basic CTL frontend port API.  The comments in the
332header explain the API.
333
334ctl_frontend_cam_sim.c:
335----------------------
336
337This is a CTL frontend port that is also a CAM SIM.  The idea is that this
338frontend allows for using CTL without any target-capable hardware.  So any
339LUNs you create in CTL are visible via this port.
340
341ctl_ha.c:
342ctl_ha.h:
343--------
344
345This is a High Availability API and TCP-based interlink implementation.
346
347ctl_io.h:
348--------
349
350This defines most of the core CTL I/O structures.  union ctl_io is
351conceptually very similar to CAM's union ccb.
352
353ctl_ioctl.h:
354-----------
355
356This defines all ioctls available through the CTL character device, and
357the data structures needed for those ioctls.
358
359ctl_private.h:
360-------------
361
362Private data structres (e.g. CTL softc) and function prototypes.  This also
363includes the SCSI vendor and product names used by CTL.
364
365ctl_scsi_all.c
366ctl_scsi_all.h:
367--------------
368
369CTL wrappers around CAM sense printing functions.
370
371ctl_ser_table.c:
372---------------
373
374Command serialization table.  This defines what happens when one type of
375command is followed by another type of command.  e.g., what do you do when
376you have a mode select followed by a write?  You block the write until the
377mode select is complete.  That is defined in this table.
378
379ctl_util.c
380ctl_util.h:
381----------
382
383CTL utility functions, primarily designed to be used from userland.  See
384ctladm for the primary consumer of these functions.  These include CDB
385building functions.
386
387scsi_ctl.c:
388----------
389
390CAM target peripheral driver and CTL frontend port.  This is the path into
391CTL for commands from target-capable hardware/SIMs.
392
393Userland Commands:
394=================
395
396ctladm(8) fills a role similar to camcontrol(8).  It allow configuring LUNs,
397issuing commands, injecting errors and various other control functions.
398
399ctlstat(8) fills a role similar to iostat(8).  It reports I/O statistics
400for CTL.
401