Transport Structure Cloning

Cloning can be useful if an HBA driver needs to maintain per-target private data in the scsi_hba_tran(9S) structure, or if it needs to maintain a more complex address than is provided in the scsi_address(9S) structure.

When cloning, the HBA driver must still allocate a scsi_hba_tran structure at attach(9E) time and initialize the tran_hba_private soft state pointer and HBA entry point vectors as before. The difference occurs when the framework begins to connect an instance of a target driver to the HBA driver. Before calling the HBA driver's tran_tgt_init(9E) entry point, the framework duplicates (clones) thescsi_hba_tran structure associated with that instance of the HBA. This means that each scsi_address(9S) structure, allocated and initialized for a particular target device instance, points to a per-target instance copy of the scsi_hba_tran structure, not to the scsi_hba_tran structure allocated by the HBA driver at attach(9E) time.

Two important pointers that an HBA driver can use when it has specified cloning are contained in the scsi_hba_tran structure. The first pointer is the tran_tgt_private field, which the driver can use to point to per-target HBA private data. This is useful, for example, if an HBA driver needs to maintain a more complex address than the a_target and a_lun fields in the scsi_address(9S) structure allow. The second pointer is the tran_sd field, which is a pointer to the scsi_device(9S) structure referring to the particular target device.

When specifying cloning, the HBA driver must allocate and initialize the per-target data and initialize the tran_tgt_private field to point to this data during its tran_tgt_init(9E) entry point. The HBA driver must free this per-target data during its tran_tgt_free(9E) entry point.

When cloning, the framework initializes the tran_sd field to point to the scsi_device(9S) structure before the HBA driver tran_tgt_init(9E) entry point is called. The driver requests cloning by passing the SCSI_HBA_TRAN_CLONE flag to scsi_hba_attach_setup(9F). Figure 15–4 illustrates the HBA data structures for cloning transport operations.

Figure 15–4 Cloning Transport Operation