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Re: Probing luns > 0

daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Andrew Walker)
Mon Jan 30 23:46:00 1995

To: linux-scsi@vger.rutgers.edu
From: andy@eng.kvaerner.no (Andrew Walker)
Date: Wed, 25 Jan 1995 10:23:42 +0100 (MET)

> 
> > 
> > From: Rik Faith <faith@cs.unc.edu>
> > Subject: Re: Default, no probing of luns > 0
> > Date: Tue, 24 Jan 1995 10:31:09 -0500
> > 
> > 
> > On Mon 23 Jan 1995 11:17:06 MST,
> >    Drew Eckhardt <drew@boulder.openware.com> wrote:
> > 
> >  > There are still large numbers of broken SCSI devices out there which 
> >  > are extremely unhappy (ie, lock the SCSI bus up, do an unexpected 
> >  > disconnect, etc) when you attempt to talk to them at a LUN other
> >  > than 0.
> >  > 
> >  > Since very few devices use multiple LUNs (SCSI bridge boards,
> >  > fan out adapters, jukeboxes, and CD changers are the only 
> >  > ones to come to mind), I think that it might be reasonable 
> >  > to make the default maximum LUN searched 0 instead of 7.
> >  > 
> >  > We could scan for the additional LUNS only when 
> >  > 	- The user used the max_scsi_luns= command line 
> >  > 		option.
> >  > 	- Certain vendor & model combinations were returned 
> >  > 		in result for the IDENTIFY command sent to
> >  > 		LUN 0 of a given target.
> >  > Comments?
> > 
> > I think this is an excellent idea and will alleviate many of the buf
> > reports and problems that LUN scanning causes.
> 
> Another thing that nobody has mentioned (yet) is that we can then throw the
> huge blacklist table in the garbage, which will de-bloat scsi.c
> That is a major plus IMHO. Go for it.
> 
> Paul.

Yeah, that's fine until the 'whitelist' of units which *should* be probed
for multiple LUNs gets as long as (or longer than) the current 'blacklist'.
Now, I'm not saying this will happen, and maybe folks will be happy to use
a  'max_scsi_luns=' command line (what do you say Pioneer owners? :-) so we
wouldn't need a new list. In principle I'm very much *for* Drew's suggestion.

The problem with a simple command line option is that you still couldn't
mix, for example, a Pioneer CD changer and one of the duff Maxtor disks.
Of course, the command line syntax could be made a bit more complicated than
just setting the max LUN to probe for. So maybe we're back to a table.

One suggestion is a command line like:

	max_scsi_luns=07007070

where each digit is the max. LUN for devices 0-7, but this basically codes
in all the devices on the bus and makes on the fly reconfiguration slightly
trickier.

Alternatively, pair the options for a slightly more dynamic solution:

	max_scsi_luns=3757

saying that max. LUN is 7 for SCSI id's 3 and 5.

Now we just have to find out what's most acceptable to most of the people.
Just being a wet blanket as usual :-(

-Andy

-- 
Andy Walker                              Kvaerner Engineering a.s.
Andrew.Walker@eng.kvaerner.no            P.O. Box 222, N-1324 Lysaker, Norway

   ......if the answer isn't violence, neither is it silence......


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