zfs discuss - Jul 2007 - ZFS, iSCSI + Mac OS X Tiger (globalSAN iSCSI)

I have set up an iSCSI ZFS target that seems to connect properly from the
Microsoft Windows initiator in that I can see the volume in MMC Disk
Management.

When I shift over to Mac OS X Tiger with globalSAN iSCSI, I am able to set
up the Targets with the target name shown by `iscsitadm list target` and
when I actually connect or "Log On" I see that one connection exists
on the
Solaris server.  I then go on to the Sessions tab in globalSAN and I see the
session details and it appears that data is being transferred via the PDUs
Sent, PDUs Received, Bytes, etc.  HOWEVER the connection then appears to
terminate on the Solaris side if I check it a few minutes later it shows no
connections, but the Mac OS X initiator still shows connected although no
more traffic appears to be flowing in the Session Statistics dialog area.


Additionally, when I then disconnect the Mac OS X initiator it seems to drop
fine on the Mac OS X side, even though the Solaris side has shown it gone
for a while, however when I reconnect or Log On again, it seems to spin
infinitely on the "Target Connect..." dialog.  Solaris is,
interestingly,
showing 1 connection while this apparent issue (spinning beachball of death)
is going on with globalSAN.  Even killing the Mac OS X process doesn''t
seem
to get me full control again as I have to restart the system to kill all
processes (unless I can hunt them down and `kill -9` them which I''ve
not
successfully done thus far).

Has anyone dealt with this before and perhaps be able to assist or at least
throw some further information towards me to troubleshoot this?




Thanks much,


-George
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Hey there -

This is very likely completely unrelated, but here goes anyhoo...

I have noticed with some particular ethernet adapters (e1000g in my 
case) and large MTU sizes (8K) that things (most anything that really 
pushes the interface) sometimes stop for no good reason on my x86 
Solaris boxes. After it stops, I''m able to re-connect after a short
time
and it works for a while again... (Really must get around to properly 
reproducing the problem and logging a bug too...)

I''d be curious to know if setting the MTU to 1500 on both systems makes
any difference at all.

Note that I have only observed this with my super cheap adapters at 
home. I''m yet to see if (though also yet to try really hard) on the
more
expensive ones at work...

Again - Likely nothing to do with your problem, but hey. It has made a 
difference for me before...

Cheers.

Nathan.


George wrote:
> I have set up an iSCSI ZFS target that seems to connect properly from 
> the Microsoft Windows initiator in that I can see the volume in MMC Disk 
> Management.
> 
>  
> When I shift over to Mac OS X Tiger with globalSAN iSCSI, I am able to 
> set up the Targets with the target name shown by `iscsitadm list target` 
> and when I actually connect or "Log On" I see that one connection
exists
> on the Solaris server.  I then go on to the Sessions tab in globalSAN 
> and I see the session details and it appears that data is being 
> transferred via the PDUs Sent, PDUs Received, Bytes, etc.  HOWEVER the 
> connection then appears to terminate on the Solaris side if I check it a 
> few minutes later it shows no connections, but the Mac OS X initiator 
> still shows connected although no more traffic appears to be flowing in 
> the Session Statistics dialog area.
> 
>  
> Additionally, when I then disconnect the Mac OS X initiator it seems to 
> drop fine on the Mac OS X side, even though the Solaris side has shown 
> it gone for a while, however when I reconnect or Log On again, it seems 
> to spin infinitely on the "Target Connect..." dialog.  Solaris
is,
> interestingly, showing 1 connection while this apparent issue (spinning 
> beachball of death) is going on with globalSAN.  Even killing the Mac OS 
> X process doesn''t seem to get me full control again as I have to
restart
> the system to kill all processes (unless I can hunt them down and `kill 
> -9` them which I''ve not successfully done thus far).
> 
> Has anyone dealt with this before and perhaps be able to assist or at 
> least throw some further information towards me to troubleshoot this?
> 
>  
> 
>  
> Thanks much,
> 
>  
> -George
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> _______________________________________________
> zfs-discuss mailing list
> zfs-discuss at opensolaris.org
> http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss

George wrote:
> I have set up an iSCSI ZFS target that seems to connect properly from 
> the Microsoft Windows initiator in that I can see the volume in MMC 
> Disk Management.
>
>  
> When I shift over to Mac OS X Tiger with globalSAN iSCSI, I am able to 
> set up the Targets with the target name shown by `iscsitadm list 
> target` and when I actually connect or "Log On" I see that one 
> connection exists on the Solaris server.  I then go on to the Sessions 
> tab in globalSAN and I see the session details and it appears that 
> data is being transferred via the PDUs Sent, PDUs Received, Bytes, 
> etc.  HOWEVER the connection then appears to terminate on the Solaris 
> side if I check it a few minutes later it shows no connections, but 
> the Mac OS X initiator still shows connected although no more traffic 
> appears to be flowing in the Session Statistics dialog area.
>
>  
> Additionally, when I then disconnect the Mac OS X initiator it seems 
> to drop fine on the Mac OS X side, even though the Solaris side has 
> shown it gone for a while, however when I reconnect or Log On again, 
> it seems to spin infinitely on the "Target Connect..." dialog. 
>  Solaris is, interestingly, showing 1 connection while this apparent 
> issue (spinning beachball of death) is going on with globalSAN.  Even 
> killing the Mac OS X process doesn''t seem to get me full control
again
> as I have to restart the system to kill all processes (unless I can 
> hunt them down and `kill -9` them which I''ve not successfully done
> thus far).
>
> Has anyone dealt with this before and perhaps be able to assist or at 
> least throw some further information towards me to troubleshoot this?
When I learned of the globalSAN Initiator I was overcome with joy..... 
after about 2 days of spending way too much time with it I gave up.  
Have a look at their forum 
(http://www.snsforums.com/index.php?s=b0c9031ebe1a89a40cfe4c417e3443f1&showforum=14).
There are a wide range of problems.  In my case connections to the 
target (Solaris/ZFS/iscsitgt) look fine and dandy initially, but you can 
use the connection, on reboot globalSAN goes psycho, etc.

At this point I''ve given up on the product; at least for now.  If I 
could actually get an accessable disk at least part of the time I''d dig
my fingers into it, but it doesn''t offer a usable remote disk to begin 
with and in a variety of other environments it have identical problems.  
I consider debugging it to be purely academic at this point.  Its a 
great way to gain insight into the inner workings of iSCSI, but without 
source code or DTrace on the Mac its hard to expect any big gains.

Thats my personal take.  If you really wanna go hacking on it regardless 
bring it up on the Storage list and we can corporately enjoy the 
academic challenge of finding the problems, but there is nothing to 
suggest its an OpenSolaris issue.

benr.