Comments on: FreeBSD iSCSI Initiator Installation and Configuration

By: swinful

swinful — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 14:38:35 +0000

Vivek,

Great, short and sweat article. Just wanted to add, there is no need to add “device iscsi_initiator” into the kernel, recompile and reboot the system if you will use it as a loadable module. You may simple just “# kldload iscsi_initiator” from the command-line or add it to /boot/loader.conf to have it load automatically at boot time.

Regards,
-swinful

By: Brian

Brian — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 18:39:30 +0000

Many targets will require a properly formatted InitiatorName. i.e. It must start with iqn. and it must contain a ‘:’

Also, once the drive is mounted, many camcontrol commands will work to get additional info.

There does seem to be occasional problems with FreeBSD attempting to mount the drives before the iscsi connection is established.

By: Robin Stahlbaum

Robin Stahlbaum — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 20:04:15 +0000

Works well for me. I used ESX 4 based freebsd and openfiler.
thanks for the info

By: Eric Chang

Eric Chang — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 03:02:40 +0000

nopam# kldstat
Id Refs Address Size Name
1 7 0xc0400000 9fab28 kernel
2 1 0xc0dfb000 ff18 iscsi_initiator.ko
3 1 0xc0e0b000 6a45c acpi.ko
4 1 0xc44d9000 a6000 zfs.ko
5 1 0xc457f000 2000 opensolaris.ko
nopam#

nopam# iscontrol -v -d targetaddress=192.168.10.202 initiatorname=nxl
adding ‘targetaddress=192.168.10.202′
I-: cmd=0×3 len=265
SessionType=Discovery
InitiatorName=nxl
MaxBurstLength=131072
HeaderDigest=None,CRC32C
DataDigest=None,CRC32C
MaxRecvDataSegmentLength=65536
ErrorRecoveryLevel=0
DefaultTime2Wait=0
DefaultTime2Retain=0
DataPDUInOrder=Yes
DataSequenceInOrder=Yes
MaxOutstandingR2T=1
T-: cmd=0×23 len=211
MaxBurstLength=131072
HeaderDigest=None
DataDigest=None
MaxRecvDataSegmentLength=65536
ErrorRecoveryLevel=0
DefaultTime2Wait=0
DefaultTime2Retain=0
DataPDUInOrder=Yes
DataSequenceInOrder=Yes
MaxOutstandingR2T=1
I-: cmd=0×4 len=16
SendTargets=All
recvpdu: Socket is not connected
recvpdu failed
I-: cmd=0×6 len=0
recvpdu: Socket is not connected
recvpdu failed
nopam#

this is the result of my working.
any ideas ??
sorry for my poor english ..

By: togr

togr — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 22:17:17 +0000

I just set this up between freebsd 7.0 and netapp filer simulator (ontap 7251) , both running under virtualbox 214 with CHAP authentication. All worked very well since the very first try.
This is obviously not a production environment so I can’t really tell anything except that it worked with the mentioned config:(
I noticed a small flaw of iscontrol: I could not display valid initiator name of my freebsd, this should be something like iqn.XXXXXX….., it is visible on filer after first discovery session, but you need to have access to storage side, which not always is possible (large organisations often have separate teams).

By: Ian

Ian — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 22:27:27 +0000

I agree with Andrei… works great with OpenFiler, both being under VMware control. But, I also tested with a ZFS iSCSI target on Solaris 10 08/07, and it didn’t work. I think the ZFS iSCSI target controller (or the Solaris 10 one) is broken, as a Mac OS iSCSI initiator can’t talk to it properly either. I will check more into the compatibility issue. But, doing a “iscontrol -c /etc/iscsi.conf -n ” causes an infinite da???? detection loop by the system.

Ian

By: Fabian

Fabian — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 18:02:37 +0000

I tried this tutorial on a amd64 version. It works fine up to the part, where the new partion shuld be mounted. When trying to mount the device (mount /dev/da0s1 /iscsi), the following message occurs:

mount: /dev/da0s1 : Invalid argument

I tried to build the fs, with the following command:

newfs /dev/da0s1

After this, the device can be mounted. But when trying to access the volume (read or write) the complete machine freezes and needs a hard-reset to start up again. Any ideas?

By: Andrei

Andrei — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 14:27:15 +0000

It works with Openfiler (tested only on vmware environment). I reconfigured from the beginning. The important thing is to remove any network ACLs and authentification and start from the simplest configuration. But I can’t set it to add the device automatically after reboot (excluding cron’s @reboot).

By: vivek

vivek — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 12:34:34 +0000

Andrei,

I’ve tested above instructions only on FreeBSD 7. Let us know more about your findings on FreeNAS or Openfiler.

By: Andrei

Andrei — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 12:09:03 +0000

Just tested it with Openfiler and it doesn’t work.
I will soon test it with FreeNAS also.
I keep having this error:
#iscontrol -c /etc/iscsi.conf -n target0
0×0203: Not found
If I play with the username/pass (change it) it cryes about authentification error…
I’ll also do some tcpdump traces to see what’s the error…

By: vivek

vivek — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 19:46:48 +0000

So far no problem here but yes technology is new…

By: John Hannerhan

John Hannerhan — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 19:41:49 +0000

Has anyone tried this, and if so, is it stable?

By: bat

bat — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 19:00:55 +0000

Hi, there’s a small typo here:

“You may also need to update /etc/fstab file:
/dev/ad1s1 /iscsi ufs rw 3 3″

i guess ad1s1 should be da1s1. anyway.
thx for the howto

By: Elnour

Elnour — Tue, 06 May 2008 11:25:38 +0000

Hi,

great guid, but how do you automate the part below

iscontrol -c /etc/iscsi.conf -n officeiscsi

and do you get fstab part to work without the above?

thanks

By: Tamouh

Tamouh — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 04:39:00 +0000

Great information. Hard to find this amount of details anywhere on the web for FBSD iSCSI. Totally appreciate the efforts