Question regarding OIR bit

Kevin D Butt kdbutt at us.ibm.com
Thu Apr 20 14:09:17 PDT 2006


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Roger and Michael,
My memory is that the OIR is set to Guarantee that when the I_T Nexus on 
which a command is received does not hold a reservation the command 
receives a CC telling that I_T Nexus that it does not hold a reservation. 
There was no other intent here than guaranteeing that the initiator in 
question holds a reservation before allowing commands to be processed.
If an initiator gets a reservation conflict, he will not be allowed to do 
I/O and knows that somebody else has the LUN reserved.	If an initiator 
gets a "not reserved" he knows that he must reserve the LUN.  I guess the 
question comes down to if the desired behavior of the system is to make 
the host get "not reserved" then reservation conflict when he tries to 
reserve.  However, if the device server is supposed to respond with "not 
reserved" for every reservation conflict eligible command then reserve 
would also get it and be broken.  I think this dictates that the desired 
behavior should be:
If a different I_T Nexus has the LUN reserved, return Reservation 
Conflict, else if the I_T Nexus through which the command is received does 
not hold a reservation, then return CC with "Not Reserved".
Thanks,
Kevin D. Butt
SCSI & Fibre Channel Architect, Tape Firmware
MS 6TYA, 9000 S. Rita Rd., Tucson, AZ 85744
Tel: 520-799-2869 / 520-799-5280
Fax: 520-799-2723 (T/L:321)
Email address: kdbutt at us.ibm.com
http://www-03.ibm.com/servers/storage/ 
"Roger Cummings" <roger_cummings at symantec.com> 
Sent by: owner-t10 at t10.org
04/20/2006 09:47 AM
To
"Banther, Michael" <michael.banther at hp.com>
cc
<t10 at t10.org>, "Casado, Reyes" <reyes.casado at hp.com>, "Greg Wheeless" 
<greg_wheeless at symantec.com>
Subject
RE: Question regarding OIR bit
Michael,
I've searched both my memory and my archive, and neither has been very 
enlightening on this subject.
What I can tell you is that the current wording was not in the r0 of the 
OIR proposal, but appeared in r1 after the initial proposal was presented 
at the September 2003 CAP meeting. The minutes confirm that changes were 
requested as that meeting, and my notes from then have reference to 
needing to include the phrase "an I_T nexus not holding" and define which 
commands the bit applies to, but that's all. After r1 the text is 
essentially unchanged until the r4 that was approved for inclusion in 
SSC-3.
I believe that the intent here is that the 2nd and 3rd sentence describe 
the same situation, namely that if the OIR bit is set to one, and and a 
command is received for logical unit upon which no reservation or 
persistent reservation exists, then the response is a CHECK CONDITION with 
"Not Reserved".
I don't believe that your interpretation of the sentences as describing 
different situations works, because in the first bullet the response would 
be a Reservation Conflict, and that is not related to what is being 
addressed in the OIR description.
Note that the second sentence only says "no reservation exists", while the 
3rd says "no reservation or persistent reservation exists". I wonder if 
the wording is and attempt to cover the use of the OIR bit with both SPC-2 
and SPC-3 compliant devices. Sorry, that's the only constructive 
suggestion I can make - does anybody else have other ideas or memories?
Regards,
Roger Cummings
SYMANTEC
roger_cummings at symantec.com
From: Banther, Michael [mailto:michael.banther at hp.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, April 18, 2006 12:10 PM
To: Roger Cummings
Cc: t10 at t10.org; Casado, Reyes
Subject: Question regarding OIR bit
Hi Roger,
In SSC-3r02, clause 8.3.3, the definition of the OIR bit has caused some 
confusion here:
If the only if reserved (OIR) bit is set to one, the device server shall 
process a command only if a reservation (see SPC-2) or persistent 
reservation (see SPC-3) exists that allows access via the I_T nexus from 
which the command was received. If the OIR bit is set to one and a command 
is received from an I_T nexus for which no reservation exists, the device 
server shall not process the command. If the OIR bit is set to one and a 
command is received from an I_T nexus for a logical unit upon which no 
reservation or persistent reservation exists, the device server shall 
terminate the command with CHECK CONDITION status. The sense key shall be 
set to ILLEGAL REQUEST and the additional sense code shall be set to NOT 
RESERVED.
We're not sure whether you intended the second a third sentences above to 
describe the same situation or two slightly different situations.  I read 
it that these two sentences describe two different situations:
The first sentence applies to a command received from an I_T nexus when 
that I_T nexus does not hold a reservation (including a persistent 
reservation) but some other I_T nexus does hold one.
The second sentence applies to a command received from an I_T nexus when 
neither that I_T nexus nor any other I_T nexus holds a reservation.
However it's possible to interpret that second sentence as an introduction 
to the specifics of the third sentence, in which case they refer to the 
same situation.  Could you please clarify the intention?
Michael Banther
Hewlett-Packard Ltd.
Telephone +44 (117) 312-9503



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