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New feature - option to use libtcmu without netlink
Some folks might be using libtcmu in their own applications which don't hook into TCMU runner, much like the consumer.c example. In those cases, it can be useful to avoid using netlink altogether. As I'm sure you are aware, it's almost impossible to have more than one user of TCMU when netlink is involved. This is because the kernel broadcasts device events to all TCMU listeners over netlink and simply accepts the first response it receives. This can lead to the following scenario: 1. Application A creates a TCMU backstore with handler=app_a 2. The kernel (target_core_user) broadcasts the netlink message to all instances of libtcmu 3. Application B receives the message first. Application B doesn't have a handler for app_a, so it replies with an error code to the kernel. 4. The kernel receives the error and aborts backstore creation. 5. Application A wonders why its backstore creation failed. Users can avoid using netlink altogether by setting nl_reply_supported=-1 at backing store creation time. This is great as multiple applications using TCMU can now coexist on the same machine. The problem is we don't have a nice way to utilise libtcmu in this model. We need a way to notify libtcmu that a device has been created, reconfigured, removed so the relevant handlers can be called. Currently, this is done via netlink. This PR allows users to utilise all the great features of libtcmu, but without using netlink. The PR makes the following changes: * modify tcmulib_initialize to take a boolean parameter which informs libtcmu whether or not it should set up netlink. If true we do. If false we don't. * expose new methods tcmulib_notify_device_added, tcmulib_notify_device_removed and tcmulib_notify_device_reconfiged, which application code should call to inform libtcmu that a device has been added, removed, or reconfigured. These API's take the dev_name and pass through to the existing device_add, device_remove and device_reconfig functions in libtcmu.c. tcmulib_notify_device_reconfiged will need additional parameters to specify the new config. * updates the documentation to reflect these changes and notes that tcmulib_master_fd_ready and tcmulib_get_master_fd should not be called if you chose to call tcmulib_initialize in "don't use netlink mode". * adds an example application consumer_no_netlink which shows how to create a standalone application using libtcmu without netlink. Issue open-iscsi#678. PR open-iscsi#694 Signed-off-by: Alex Reid <[email protected]>
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