NAME

       vblade, vbladed - export data via ATA over Ethernet

SYNOPSIS

       vblade [ -m mac[,mac...] ] shelf slot netif filename

DESCRIPTION

       The  vblade  command  starts  a process that uses raw sockets to perform ATA over Ethernet, acting like a
       virtual EtherDrive (R) blade.

       The vbladed script can be used to daemonize the vblade process,  detaching  it  from  your  terminal  and
       sending its output to the system logs.

   Arguments
       shelf  This should be the shelf address (major AoE address) of the AoE device to create.

       slot   This should be the slot address (minor AoE address) of the AoE device to create.

       netif  The name of the ethernet network interface to use for AoE communications.

       filename
              The name of the regular file or block device to export.

   Options
       -b     The  -b  flag  takes  an  argument,  the advertised buffer count, specifying the maximum number of
              outstanding messages the server can queue for processing.

       -d     The -d flag selects O_DIRECT mode for accessing the underlying block device.

       -s     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.

       -r     The -r flag restricts the export of the device to be read-only.

       -m     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.

       -o     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).

       -l     The  -l  flag  takes  an  argument, the number of sectors to export.  Defaults to the file size in
              sectors minus the offset.

EXAMPLE

       In this example, the root user on a host named 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 vbladed would have
       resulted in the process running as a daemon in the background.

              nai:~# vblade 11 1 eth0 /data/3TB

NOTES AND WARNINGS

       Users of Jumbo frames should read the README file distributed with vblade to learn about a workaround for
       kernel buffering limitations.

       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.

REPORTING BUGS

       Please report bugs to the aoetools-discuss mailing list.

AUTHOR

       Brantley Coile (brantley@coraid.com)

                                                                                                       vblade(8)