ISCSI without virtual drives?

[Poet129]

I want to use ISCSI to allow a volume to be mounted before any OS is loaded, however every implementation of it seems to need virtual drives and this wouldn't work in my workflow would this be possible. I didn't want to burn time setting it up if I couldn't store it raw.

[Electronics Wizardy]

So you want to boot from a iSCSI volume?

 

You need a hardware card to do that, there are a few. Or get a preboot bootloader do to it.

 

Why does it need to load before the os?

[Poet129]

10 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

So you want to boot from a iSCSI volume?

 

You need a hardware card to do that, there are a few. Or get a preboot bootloader do to it.

 

Why does it need to load before the os?

Booting would be nice, but not required I was looking to store a page file on it.

[Electronics Wizardy]

11 minutes ago, Poet129 said:

Booting would be nice, but not required I was looking to store a page file on it.

Are you on windows or linux?

 

NOrmally this is just a bad ideas though, use a local ssd, much faster, more reliable and easier to setup.

[Poet129]

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Are you on windows or linux?

 

NOrmally this is just a bad ideas though, use a local ssd, much faster, more reliable and easier to setup.

I'm open to either to get this to work, but I want the page file stored on the other PC and would like if it could be stored on a existing partition.

[Poet129]

Just now, Poet129 said:

I'm open to either to get this to work, but I want the page file stored on the other PC and would like if it could be stored on a existing partition.

I'm looking to "share" a existing partition over ISCSI is this possible?

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Poet129 said:

I'm open to either to get this to work, but I want the page file stored on the other PC and would like if it could be stored on a existing partition.

Ive done this with linux before, its super easy, just make a swap file if supported, or make a loop device, and have it added after footaup

 

 

HOw is the iscsi volume formatted?

 

Just now, Poet129 said:

I'm looking to "share" a existing partition over ISCSI is this possible?

you can share it like you would share any other drive, so using smb/cifs.

 

Normally if you use normal filesystems you only want one initiator at a time as there not made to be used by 2 clients.

 

Why do you want iscsi here? I think you would be better off with nfs or cifs here.

[Poet129]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

you can share it like you would share any other drive, so using smb/cifs.

 

Normally if you use normal filesystems you only want one initiator at a time as there not made to be used by 2 clients.

 

Why do you want iscsi here? I think you would be better off with nfs or cifs here.

Are you saying I can access a normal smb/cifs share with ISCSI?

[Poet129]

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Ive done this with linux before, its super easy, just make a swap file if supported, or make a loop device, and have it added after footaup

 

 

HOw is the iscsi volume formatted?

I haven't set it up yet if you look at the OG post.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Poet129 said:

Are you saying I can access a normal smb/cifs share with ISCSI?

you can have a pc share the volume that is a iscsi share with smb/cifs.

 

Why are you using iscsi here? I think you would be better off with smb/cifs

[Poet129]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

you can have a pc share the volume that is a iscsi share with smb/cifs.

 

Why are you using iscsi here? I think you would be better off with smb/cifs

Yes, normally but I want it to be available before boot.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, Poet129 said:

Yes, normally but I want it to be available before boot.

Do you want it available before boot just so you can use it as a page file?

 

Why not add the page file after boot? Linux can easily do this.

[Poet129]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

Do you want it available before boot just so you can use it as a page file?

 

Why not add the page file after boot? Linux can easily do this.

Yes, but windows can't and I would like to use windows if possible plus there are other things you can't do if it is mounted after boot.

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 minutes ago, Poet129 said:

Yes, but windows can't and I would like to use windows if possible plus there are other things you can't do if it is mounted after boot.

Then your gonna need a physical card to make it present at boot.

 

But really, don't do page file on iscsi, just use the main ssd or a secondary ssd, why do you want page file on the network.

[Poet129]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

Then your gonna need a physical card to make it present at boot.

 

But really, don't do page file on iscsi, just use the main ssd or a secondary ssd, why do you want page file on the network.

I have a bigger volume that isn't movable from the pc but I don't really need it there. What about a special boot-loader like clover?

[Electronics Wizardy]

4 minutes ago, Poet129 said:

I have a bigger volume that isn't movable from the pc but I don't really need it there. What about a special boot-loader like clover?

What do you mean by bigger volume that isn't movable?

 

Just put the page file on the boot drive, this seems way to complicated and will cause weird issues. Or just add a small cheap ssd

 

I don't know of any bootloaders that do this, some pxe ones may, but there designed to boot from the iscsci volume aswell.

[Poet129]

16 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

What do you mean by bigger volume that isn't movable?

 

Just put the page file on the boot drive, this seems way to complicated and will cause weird issues. Or just add a small cheap ssd

 

I don't know of any bootloaders that do this, some pxe ones may, but there designed to boot from the iscsci volume aswell.

ok

[Poet129]

On 8/9/2020 at 1:40 PM, Poet129 said:

ok

Looking at a Ubuntu Linux host for ISCSI using tgt, what happens if I set "backing-store" to /home/USER/Documents instead of something like /dev/sdb?

[Electronics Wizardy]

On 8/10/2020 at 4:35 PM, Poet129 said:

Looking at a Ubuntu Linux host for ISCSI using tgt, what happens if I set "backing-store" to /home/USER/Documents instead of something like /dev/sdb?

the backing store needs to be a file(a drive is a file in linux basically), so you can make a file that it mounds, but you can't have a directory as a target.