Re: iSCSI: Iterating long text responses

[Mark Bakke <mbakke@cisco.com>]

Stephen Bailey wrote:
> 
> Mark,
> 
> > Anyway, #2 would work fine as well, but again, I'd really like
> > to avoid keeping state on the target.
> 
> You have to keep state on lots of state at this granularity (per
> session/connection) on the target anyway.  All this would require is
> an integer index into your target list table (which you obviously have
> in some form to respond to SendTargets at all...)

True; it just seemed better (well, certainly easier) to avoid the
problem of iterating SendTargets at by forcing the long response
into the current protocol with multiple PDUs.  I would imagine that
most responses will fit in a small number of PDUs anyway.

> One might suggest a variant of #5 with an initial offset argument to
> the request, so you could get `what's left', but that really does
> create a state problem.  With the simple iterator at least you know
> that every return is (or was) a complete target description.

If we had to do that, I'd rather do the iterator.

> But then again, what do I know?  [this list is like driving, cf. Repo
> Man]
> 
> Certainly doing #5 would not leave a criminal hole in the spec.
> Neither would it probably be used in general by X-* operations.

It looks like most folks are comfortable implementing #5 for
SendTargets, even if it doesn't solve all of the possible problems
of X-* stuff.  Are you planning to use X-* commands?

BTW, if anyone is planning to make heavy use of X-* text commands, it
may be worth speaking up now, to make sure we do this right.


> Steph

-- 
Mark A. Bakke
Cisco Systems
mbakke@cisco.com
763.398.1054