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)