libiscsi bug in fresh install of Slack 12?
 

I've been using Slack for probably 5 or 6 years now, run it on all of our main servers at work. However I just found what may be a bug in Slackware 12?

1. Do a 'Full' install of Slack 12
2. Reboot, login as root, and run 'modprobe libiscsi'
3. Observe 'FATAL: Error inserting libiscsi (/lib/modules/2.6.21.5-smp/kernel/drivers/scsi/libiscsi.ko): Invalid module format' error

dmesg reports 'libiscsi: exports duplicate symbol iscsi_conn_get_param (owned by kernel)'.

I tried installing the open-iscsi tarball, but that only produced more errors when I try to modprobe one of the iscsi modules.

Please help?

What kernel are you running ? is it the 2.5.21.5-smp ? Run 'uname -r' just to make sure.

Thanks for the reply H_TeXMeX_H. Yes, it's 2.6.21.5-smp. I have a single-CPU system though, if that matters.

Most likely you are running a Slackware huge(-smp) kernel.
The "huge" kernels have the iscsi drivers compiled-in and loading the module will produce that error. I.e. the module is not needed in this case.

If you switch to a generic(-smp) kernel this error message should go away.

Eric

Ah, thank you. Yes, it appears that the hugesmp.s kernel is the one that is installed by default.

I guess open-iscsi doesn't like to be compiled into the kernel, as iscsid complains about a 'Bad or missing module version from /sys/module/scsi_transport_iscsi/version' in the syslog. Looks like it may be a bug in the iscsid code (http://groups.google.at/group/open-i...647873434f232b - "So for example if we put the version info in the iscsi netlink msg, then that would also fix the module version not showing up when scsi_transport_iscsi is built into the kernel.") so it appears my choices are to either use the generic kernel which has iscsi as a module, hack the iscsid code, or wait for a fixed release from the open-iscsi folks.

Thanks again!

Interesting, the non-smp generic kernel hangs on boot in VMWare (single-proc config). Freezes at 'Serial: 8250/16550 driver...' whether VMWare has a virtual serial port configured or not.

The generic-smp kernel seems to work though, after I did a 'mkinitrd -m ext3' and pointed LILO to the initrd, which is exactly what I want. Now I just have to add the iscsi modules to the initrd and tweak the init script in the initrd to connect to the iscsi target and mount root on it.

Well shoot it looks like the scsi_transport_iscsi module is built into the generic kernel as well, so I will have to compile a custom kernel without it. I wish open-iscsi would fix their stuff or Slackware would compile all open-iscsi stuff as modules in the default kernels!

But what's wrong with it being built-in ? Does it cause some type of problem ? Will your computer not boot ? Does it freeze ?

The problem with open-iscsi being built-in is the userspace tools (iscsid, iscsiadm, iscsistart) do not work. They try to read the module version from /sys/module/scsi_transport_iscsi/version which doesn't exist because they aren't loadable modules.

That's not Slackware's fault, of course. It's a bug the open-iscsi folks need to fix, but in the meantime, it would be nice if Slackware shipped with a kernel that had them as modules.

Thanks for posting this - I've been banging my head against my desk for about a day now on this very subject; iscsi is awesome, but it seems like the development is always so far behind the kernel team. Alrighty, time to compile on my old 900MHz Duron again! Wahoo! I'm going to go grab a caffeinated beverage.