Scsi

sg3-utils, version 1.44, was recently uploaded to Debian. This new upstream release has happened almost 2.5 years after the last release. One important feature to emphasize about is some support for NVMe disks, which are now getting more common on latest range of laptops.

rrs@priyasi:~$ sudo sg_inq /dev/nvme0
[sudo] password for rrs: 
Identify controller for /dev/nvme0:
  Model number: PC401 NVMe SK hynix 512GB               
  Serial number: ES82N092210402J4U   
  Firmware revision: 80003E00
  Version: 1.2
  Optional admin command support:
    Device self-test
    Firmware download and commit
    Format NVM
    Security send and receive
  Optional NVM command support:
    Save and Select fields non-zero
    Dataset management
    Write uncorrectable
    Compare
  PCI vendor ID VID/SSVID: 0x1c5c/0x1c5c
  IEEE OUI Identifier: 0xace42e
  Controller ID: 0x1
  Number of namespaces: 1
  Maximum data transfer size: 32 pages
  Namespace 1 (of 1):
    Namespace size/capacity: 1000215216/1000215216 blocks
    Namespace utilization: 765481168 blocks
    EUI-64: 0xace42e8170034999
    Number of LBA formats: 2
    Index LBA size: 0
    LBA format 0 support: <-- active
      Logical block size: 512 bytes
      Approximate namespace size: 512 GB
      Metadata size: 0 bytes
      Relative performance: Best [0x0]
    LBA format 1 support:
      Logical block size: 4096 bytes
      Approximate namespace size: 0 GB
      Metadata size: 0 bytes
      Relative performance: Best [0x0]

More details are available on the upstream page. Here’s the snippet for NVMe disks support.

LIO -fb is the new SCSI Target for Debian. Previously, we maintained the LIO tools from the pre-fork upstream branch. But, with good reasons, we’ve now moved to the newer -fb (Free Branch).

As the maintainer for those pacakges, I have a local LIO setup. Overy the years, I’ve been tuning and using this setup with a bunch of SCSI clients. Now with the new -fb packages it was worrisome for me, on how to migrate (Note: migration is not supported by the Debian packages) my old setup to the new one.

Now that we prepare for the next Debian Stable release (Stretch), it is time to provide some updates on what the current state of some of the (storage related) packages in Debian is. This is not an update on the complete list of packages related to storage, but it does cover some of them.

REMOVALS

• iscsitarget - The iscsitarget stood as a great SCSI target for the Linux kernel. It seems to have had a good user base not just in Linux but also with VMWare users. But this storage target was always out-of-tree. With LIO having gotten merged as the default in-kernel SCSI Target, development on iscsitarget seems to have stalled. In Debian, for Stretch, there will be no iscsitarget. The package is already removed from Debian Testing and Debian Unstable, and nobody has volunteered to take over it.
• system-storage-manager - This tool intended to be a simple unified storage tool, through which one could work with various storage technologies like LVM, BTRFS, cryptsetup, SCSI etc. But the upstream development hasn’t really been much lately. For Debian Stable, it shouldn’t be part of it, given it has some bugs.
• libstoragemgmt - libstoragemgmt is a universal storage client-side library to talk to remote Storage Arrays. The project is active upstream. For Debian, the package is out-of-date and, now, also needs a maintainer. Unless someone picks up this package, it will not be part of Debian Stretch.

UPDATES

I recently purchased a Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex 1 TB hard drive. It is a 2.5" compact disk that you connect over USB. It draws its power from the USB controller. My previous Extern HDDs were all 2.5" laptop drives, for which I bought a USB enclosure. Those devices always worked perfect, as in:

• They were automatically detected
• Partitions/File Systems understood
• Desktop systems would prompt for actions

The typical kernel messages I got for these devices were: