Tasks Network Block Device

Add Network Block Device support

• Difficulty: Medium
• Language: C
• Mentor:
• Suggested by: bjjohnson, andreiwarkentin

Table of Contents Details Test environment Links for more information Development environment Sub-goals Further Discussion See Also

Details

Test environment

Client

• OVMF, EmulatorPkg, or NT32.

Server

• Linux
• Windows (for example, try http://www.vanheusden.com/windows/nbdsrvr/)

Links for more information

• https://github.com/NetworkBlockDevice/nbd/blob/master/doc/proto.md
• http://nbd.sourceforge.net/
• http://wiki.wireshark.org/NBD
• http://www.vanheusden.com/java/JNbd/
• http://www.vanheusden.com/windows/nbdsrvr/
• https://github.com/yoe/nbd
• http://code.activestate.com/recipes/577569-nbd-server-in-python/

Development environment

Building: This project can be completed on any edk2 supported OS or toolchain.

Sub-goals

Sub-goals:

• Read the publicly available documentation and understand the NBD protocol: https://github.com/NetworkBlockDevice/nbd/blob/master/doc/proto.md
  • For any missing details, wireshark can be used to observe existing behavior
• Setup UEFI environment with working TCP/IP (can 'ping' from Shell)
• Investigate EDK2 TcpIoLib and ecosystem.
  • Some questions to answer: how to get local IP? Study UEFI spec and EDK2 code under NetworkPkg.
  • Write an UEFI application that opens a TCP socket, writes and reads from it. Connect to a 'netcat' server. Netcat is a simple tool (like cat) that can be a TCP server or client (on Linux, alternatives exist for Windows).
  • Extend UEFI application to implement the *basic* NBD protocol - no named exports, no authentication. Be able to connect to a server and read back one block of data.
• Understand UEFI driver model, and block protocols: EFI_BLOCK_IO_PROTOCOL and EFI_BLOCK_IO2_PROTOCOL.
  • Better understand protocols, interfaces.
  • Understanding driver binding, enumeration.
  • Implement a dummy EFI_BLOCK_IO_PROTOCOL driver that creates a sample block device that returns all zeroes for all reads.
• NBD block I/O device.
  • Wire-in NBD support from your network application above into your block I/O driver - implement read-only support.
  • [EXTRA] Add read/write support.
  • Think about management interface - how do you specify target server/port? (assumed you hardcoded it for now).
  • [EXTRA] Write simple tool to manage NBD driver.

Further Discussion

This project would be for an edk2 based driver, so please discuss the project on edk2-devel.

See Also

• Tasks#Network Block Device (NBD) client