[vbox-dev] iscsi initiator patch

[Klaus Espenlaub]

Gergely Sánta wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> I was testing VirtualBox and iscsi last few days. We are using
> iscsi-scst for performance reasons. VirtualBox was not able to handle
> those iscsi disks, always reported VERR_BUFFER_OVERFLOW. Each other
> iscsi initiators I tested (vmware, iscsiadm) used that disk without
> problems, so I thought, the problem may be in VBox initiator.
> 
> I downloaded sources and figured out, that the problem is in static
> buffer in VBox initiator. iscsi-scst tries to send sensitive data sized
> 96 bytes. I don't know, what this data is, but VBox denied our iscsi
> disk because of this buffer. I increased static buffer size to 96 bytes
> (sense[32] -> sense[96]) in VBox iscsi initiator module, compiled it,
> and now it works just perfect.

Thanks, fixing such problems have been on my todo list already.

> I'm attaching patchfile against version 3.1.4_OSE
> 
> Do you think, it's acceptable for stable releases?

The fix will break again when some iSCSI target comes around which 
provides even more sense data, so it is just one step.

So from my point of view the solution is to both apply your patch and 
also make VirtualBox a little less paranoid. Having to truncate sense 
data is no error situation, so it should be handled gracefully.

Again, thanks for providing the patch and reminding me.

Klaus

> Regards,
> 
> Gergely Santa