Comments on Using iSCSI On Ubuntu 10.04 (Initiator And Target)

Nice writeup.  I just wanted to mention that OS NEXUS has the QuantaStor OS which is essentially as custom Ubuntu Server 10.10 distro with a commercial management stack which essentially converts your system into an enterprise grade iSCSI storage system.  There's a Free/Community Edition that's a snap to setup and has a number of nice features over configuring and managing the iSCSI target manually.

I just finished setting up my iSCSI target on a new Ubuntu 10.10 system.  I followed these directions, and it did not work, but the only difference was that the "/etc/initiators.allow" and "/etc/ietd.conf" files are really now in /etc/iet directory, so instead of editing (and CREATING) those files, at least in the CURRENT off the shelf version of Ubuntu, you'll want to use /etc/iet/initiators.allow and /etc/iet/ietd.conf.

The only other difference I ran into was that I used "apt-get install iscsitarget" to do the initial install.  I was already familiar with this command, so that's what I used - I dont know if the command documented above is still good, or not, but mine worked!!

Good luck to everyone trying this!   It seems to be working great so far..  Now to move some VMWare VM Images over to the new iSCSI LUN!!

-Steve

Well..  My iSCSI server has been working so well thanks to this post..  SO..  not being one to leave well enough alone, I decided to build a new one!!  (On my last install, I forgot to leave room for a lun for my MacBook to use for TimeMachine, so I built a whole new box to migrate to!

 AGAIN, these instructions were awesome.  I'm learning this stuff, and it was way more comfortable this time around, but I haven't memorised everything yet!

SO..  One question, and this might be an ESX ONLY kind of thing, but my second LUN is a 3tb (ok..  2997 GB) lun, and my ESX machine SEES it, but it shows it as a 744GB lun..

 Anyone have any hints to figure out where I might be going wrong??  DiskUtility in Ubuntu shows the partition correctly (/dev/md_d0p2) as roughly a 3 tb partition, and I dont see any way to have even thought to make that limitation in the iSCSI target configuration..  What could I be missing, and where should I start troubleshooting this? 

Thanks again!

-Steve

ESX/ESXi has a maximum block size of 2TB and returns the 744GB volume size when you give it a block device that exceeds 2TB. You should be okay if you provide it with a 2TB target. If you need the full 3TB, consider providing a 2TB target and a 1TB target.

Great! Thanks so much this really got me on my way!

an artikle i have found with a lot of screenshots and every detail but in german

http://blog.is-a-geek.org/iscsi-target-auf-ubuntu-server-erstellen-und-in-windowslinux-einbinden

This howto would improve if it mentioned a bit more clear that the _netdev flag in /etc/fstab has the effect that the order of unmounting the filesystem and disabling networking on shutdown will change to the right order for iscsi.

 Otherwise I made great use of this howto.

Hi Falko,

Thank you for this guide, it worked pretty well for me.

I had some issues regarding the authentication part (CHAP, username/pass) but after I did the changes on the  conf file, not on command line, and did a restart of the service , everything went well.

Rgds

can you explain me about your statement "The IncomingUser line contains a username and a password so that only the initiators (clients) that provide this username and password can log in and use the storage device"??

example I have only one user :

User1 (password 123456)  in Target, and user2  (password 123456) in initiator . which one is IncomingUser ??

Because I had try  all, but not work, except I dont fill anything in Incoming User.

Can you explain it to me??

I started this process with some trepidation since I'm not that great with linux: but found no issues at all here : it all seemed to work straightaway.

 Many thanks.

Hi Falko,

Thank you for such a nice explaination .It is easy guide for a new person to start with.

I also followed this tutorial and it really helped me in understanding the basics of iscsi.

On newer Versions of Ubuntu, you need to install additionally iscsitarget-dkms on the target

aptitude install iscsitarget-dkms

Everything else works even for Ubuntu 16.04. Thanks for this guide.