vblade.8

.TH vblade 8
.SH NAME
vblade, vbladed \- export data via ATA over Ethernet
.SH SYNOPSIS
.nf
.B vblade [ -m mac[,mac...] ] shelf slot netif filename
.fi
.SH DESCRIPTION
The
.I vblade
command starts a process that uses raw sockets to perform ATA over
Ethernet, acting like a virtual EtherDrive (R) blade.
.PP
The 
.I vbladed
script can be used to daemonize the vblade process,
detaching it from your terminal and sending its output to the system
logs.
.SS Arguments
.TP
\fBshelf\fP
This should be the shelf address (major AoE address) of the AoE device
to create.
.TP
\fBslot\fP
This should be the slot address (minor AoE address) of the AoE device
to create.
.TP
\fBnetif\fP
The name of the ethernet network interface to use for AoE
communications.
.TP
\fBfilename\fP
The name of the regular file or block device to export.
.SS Options
.TP
\fB-b\fP
The \-b flag takes an argument, the advertised buffer count, specifying
the maximum number of outstanding messages the server can queue for
processing.
.TP
\fB-d\fP
The \-d flag selects O_DIRECT mode for accessing the underlying block
device.
.TP
\fB-s\fP
The \-s flag selects O_SYNC mode for accessing the underlying block
device, so all writes are committed to disk before returning to the
client.
.TP
\fB-r\fP
The \-r flag restricts the export of the device to be read-only.
.TP
\fB-m\fP
The \-m flag takes an argument, a comma separated list of MAC addresses
permitted access to the vblade.  A MAC address can be specified in upper
or lower case, with or without colons.
.TP
\fB-o\fP
The \-o flag takes an argument, the number of sectors at the beginning
of the exported file that are excluded from AoE export (default zero).
.TP
\fB-l\fP
The \-l flag takes an argument, the number of sectors to export.
Defaults to the file size in sectors minus the offset.
.SH EXAMPLE
In this example, the root user on a host named
.I nai
exports a file named "3TB" to the LAN on eth0 using AoE shelf address 11
and slot address 1.  The process runs in the foreground.  Using
.I vbladed
would have resulted in the process running as a daemon in the
background.
.IP
.EX
.nf
nai:~# vblade 11 1 eth0 /data/3TB
.fi
.EE
.SH NOTES AND WARNINGS
Users of Jumbo frames should read the README file distributed with
.I vblade
to learn about a workaround for kernel buffering limitations.
.PP
At least one AoE initiator (WinAoE) has been found to enforce legacy
CHS geometry for drives by discarding sectors. You should ensure that
the underlaying regular file or block device size is a multiple of
8225280 bytes (255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 512 bytes/sector) if you
encounter filesystem corruption.
.SH REPORTING BUGS
Please report bugs to the aoetools-discuss mailing list.
.SH AUTHOR
Brantley Coile (brantley@coraid.com)