DOKK / manpages / debian 12 / vblade / vblade.8.en
vblade(8) System Manager's Manual vblade(8)

vblade, vbladed - export data via ATA over Ethernet

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

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.

This should be the shelf address (major AoE address) of the AoE device to create.
This should be the slot address (minor AoE address) of the AoE device to create.
The name of the ethernet network interface to use for AoE communications.
The name of the regular file or block device to export.

The -b flag takes an argument, the advertised buffer count, specifying the maximum number of outstanding messages the server can queue for processing.
The -d flag selects O_DIRECT mode for accessing the underlying block device.
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.
The -r flag restricts the export of the device to be read-only.
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.
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).
The -l flag takes an argument, the number of sectors to export. Defaults to the file size in sectors minus the offset.

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

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.

Please report bugs to the aoetools-discuss mailing list.

Brantley Coile (brantley@coraid.com)