[CentOS] Possible to run iscsi-target and initiator on same server?

[Ross Walker]

On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 5:37 PM, C Linus Hicks <linush at verizon.net> wrote:
> I am trying to install Oracle RAC in a two node cluster for testing
> purposes, so performance is not something that concerns me. I just want
> to go through the process all the way to creating a database. I have all
> the prerequisites except the shared storage and thought I'd give this a
> try.
>
> I'm running:
> - CentOS 5.3 kernel 2.6.18-164.el5
> - iscsitarget-1.4.18-1
> - iscsi-initiator-utils-6.2.0.868-0.18.el5_3.1
>
> I can discover and login to the node using iscsiadm on the server that
> is not also running iet, and see the new scsi disk.
>
> When I try to login using iscsiadm on the server that is running the
> ietd daemon, I see packets going over the lo interface in both
> directions, but I get error 8 - connection timed out. Wireshark is
> reporting TCP Previous segment lost errors with large sequence numbers
> like 2999833 and 8999718.
>
> Has anybody tried this, and can anybody offer any help?

You can only do that if you use blockio for your targets, otherwise
fileio will cause a deadlock on the page cache between the target's
usage of it and the initiator's usage of it.

-Ross