githubmirror/sg3_utils

README
197 строк9 KB
Douglas Gilbert
Load sg3_utils-0.92 into trunk/.
27 июн 2007, 06:36
27 июн 2007, 06:36ded737d
                      README for sg3_utils
                      ====================
Introduction
------------
In this directory are some utilities and test programs for the Linux
sg (version 3) device driver. This driver is found in latter lk 2.3
series and in lk 2.4 series kernels. If you have problems or questions
 about them please contact me at dgilbert@interlog.com .
The home site for the Linux sg device drivers is: 
http://www.torque.net/sg .
Documentation for the driver can be found at:
http://www.torque.net/sg/p/scsi_generic_v3.txt .

All programs are "GPL"-ed so you can incorporate all or part of them
in your applications as you please. The "sg_err.[hc]" files contain
ASCII text corresponding to most of the error and warning conditions
defined by the SCSI 2 standard. They are used by most other programs.

Additional information (including a version number) can be found
towards the top of each ".c" file corresponding to each utility and
test program.


Scope
-----
The sg driver in Linux can be seen as having 3 distinct versions:

   v1   lk < 2.2.6     sg_header based relatively unchanged since 1992
   v2   lk >= 2.2.6    enhanced sg_header interface structure
   v3   lk >= 2.4      additional sg_io_hdr interface structure.

This package is targeted as "v3" only. Another package called "sg_utils"
is targeted at "v2" and to a lesser extent "v1". The "sg_utils"
package has essentially the same utilities.


Utilities
---------
The main utility is a variant of the standard Unix command "dd" that
is called "sg_dd". This program takes a useful subset of the command
line arguments that "dd" takes. Furthermore "sg_dd" will only work if
one or both of the given files (ie "if" or "of") is an "sg" or a raw
device. If "bs" (block size) is not given it is assumed to be 512 bytes.
Available dd options:
   bs=<n>        typically 512 or 2048
   ibs=<n>       if given must be the same as "bs"
   obs=<n>       if given must be the same as "bs"
   if=<name>     like dd plus sg device or "-" (read from stdin)
   of=<name>     like dd plus sg device or "-" (write to stdout)
   skip=<n>      block offset to start reading "if"
   seek=<n>      block offset to start writing "of"
Extra options:
   bpt=<n>       blocks per transfer (default 128)
   dio=<n>       0 or 1, request direct IO (default 0)

All numeric arguments can take multiplier suffixes:
  "c", "C"        * 1
  "b", "B"        * 512
  "k"             * 1024           [2 ^ 10]
  "K"             * 1000           [10 ^ 3]
  "m"             * 1048576        [2 ^ 20]
  "M"             * 1000000        [10 ^ 6]
  "g"             * 1073741824     [2 ^ 30]
  "G"             * 1000000000     [10 ^ 9]
The 'skip' and 'seek' options lead to the use of the system command
lseek() to a byte offset when used on raw devices and normal files.
[For sg devices 32 bit block addresses are used thus limiting accesses
on disks with 512 byte blocks to 1 TB.] On 32 bit architectures the
normal lseek() is limited to a signed 32 bit byte offset (i.e. 2 GB).
"sg_dd" bypasses this limit by using Linux's _llseek() [while modern
"dd" commands use read loops to "walk" around the limit].
If 'count' is not given then the SCSI READ CAPACITY command will be
used (on sg devices) if appropriate. [Note that READ CAPACITY often
gives a 2 block overestimate for iso9660 file systems on CD-ROMs. 
See the "isosize" command below.]  Disk partition information can
be found with a command like "fdisk -ul /dev/sda". The 'dio' argument
requests direct IO (only functions in 2.3/2.4 kernels with some patches).

"sgp_dd" uses POSIX threads and attempts to run multiple IO operations
in parallel. The user can control the amount of parallelism from 
1 worker (i.e. single threaded) through to 16 worker threads. This is
done via the "thr=<n>" option (default 4). Copies from one sg device to
another can be considerably faster due to this parallelism. There is
also some speed benefit when raw devices are used. Other enhancements
compared to "sg_dd" are a "gen=0 | 1" argument that allows general
copying (i.e. doesn't need to involve sg or raw devices) and that 
signals are caught.

"sg_scan" does a SCSI bus scan and prints the results to standard output.
With no arguments only read permissions are needed on the sg devices
but if "-i" is given (to do a SCSI Inquiry command on the device) then
write permissions are also needed.

"sg_map" shows the mapping between sg device names and those of the
sd, sr and st device names. Some devices such as scanners have no
corresponding sd, sr nor st device names.

"sginfo" is a re-porting of the "scsiinfo" program by Eric Youngdale to
use the sg devices (rather than the sd, sr or st block devices). This
program outputs "mode sense" information. Amongst other things it outputs
the full defect list of a disk (which was truncated at 4096 bytes in
the original).

"isosize" is a utility that gives the number of bytes in an iso9660
file system. It is a rewrite by Andries Brouwer<Andries.Brouwer@cwi.nl>
of a utility that first appeared in the cdwrite package but is now
difficult to obtain. Note that the value given by isosize is usually
2 or more blocks less than the READ CAPACITY SCSI command yields on
a CD-ROM (due to run out sectors).

"sg_inq" is a utility for poking around the INQUIRY command which
contains much interesting information. It is based on SCSI 3's SPC-1
document and has additional fields defined in the draft SPC-2 document
(revision 18 from May 2000). This command is applicable to SCSI 2 (and
perhaps SCSI 1) devices as well.

"sg_test_rwbuf" is a program by Kurt Garloff <garloff@suse.de> that has
the following description:  Program to test the SCSI host adapter by 
issueing write and read operations on a device's buffer and calculating 
checksums.


Test Programs
-------------
"sg_debug" is effectively defunct now. The user can instead do:
$ cat /proc/scsi/sg/debug

"sg_rbuf" does repeated SCSI READ BUFFER commands which allows SCSI
bus bandwidth and the SCSI sub-system throughput to be measured.

"sg_turs" executes a user specified number of TEST UNIT READY commands on
the given device. This can be used to time SCSI command overhead.

"sg_readcap" call a READ CAPACITY command on the given device. The file
descriptor may be any SCSI device (i.e. not just sg devices). It should
also be able to run an almost any sg driver (back to 2.0) although this
needs some more testing.

"sg_simple1" and "sg_simple2" are simple example programs demonstrating
calls to the SCSI INQUIRY and TEST UNIT READY commands. They only differ
in their error processing: sg_simple1 uses sg_err.[hc] for error
processing while sg_simple2 does its own more primitive checks.

"sg_simple3" tests out user space scatter gather added to the version 3
sg driver.

An experimental version of a "scsi_inquiry" program is included to
show the use of the SCSI_IOCTL_SEND_COMMAND ioctl to send a SCSI
INQUIRY command. That ioctl() is supported by the SCSI sub system
mid level and so is common to all sd, sr, st and sg devices. 

"sg_reset" exercises the SCSI device/bus/host reset capability. It is
supported by the sg driver in lk 2.2.16 and beyond but associated
SCSI middle level driver changes have not been accepted into the
standard kernel at this time. Some distributions contain the patch to
the mid-level that activates this feature. Due to this uncertainty
the source is placed in the "archive" directory.

Building
--------
A Makefile is provided that builds the above utilities and test programs
'make' and 'make all' will cause everything (that is stale) to be built.

A complete rebuild can be forced by executing 'make clean' prior to
any of the above make commands. Individual commands can be built be
giving the executable name to make, for example: 'make sg_dd'.

There is also a 'make dep' but that shouldn't be needed very often.
A 'make install' will build if necessary and then install the
executables into /usr/local/bin by default (controlled by variable
INSTDIR).

Header file problems
--------------------
These utilities include 2 special Linux header files:
#include <scsi/sg.h>
#include <scsi/scsi.h>
These files are typically found in the directory /usr/include/scsi which
is maintained by the GNU glibc team. Unfortunately these GNU supplied
headers may not be (functionally) the same as those found in the kernel
source:
/usr/src/linux/include/scsi/sg.h   and
/usr/src/linux/include/scsi/scsi.h

If glibc and the kernel on a machine are of the same vintage then it is
probably sufficient to use the simple includes listed at the start of this
section. For more precise control the full absolute path into the kernel
may be given in the include. The technique used in this package is to
rely on the fact that /usr/include/linux is (usually) a symbolic link
to /usr/src/linux/include/linux . That will cause the following:
#include <linux/../scsi/sg.h> 
#include <linux/../scsi/scsi.h>
to find the kernel supplied header files.


Doug Gilbert
15th January 2001