iBFT initialization in Agama

ibft.md

Agama uses this code to initialize iSCSI and iBFT. It looks quite reasonable.

def activate
  start_services
  Yast::IscsiClientLib.getiBFT
  # Check initiator name, creating one if missing.
  return false unless Yast::IscsiClientLib.checkInitiatorName(silent: true)

  # Why we need to sleep here? This was copied from yast2-iscsi-client.
  sleep(0.5)
  Yast::IscsiClientLib.getConfig
  Yast::IscsiClientLib.autoLogOn
end

But since it relies on YaST libraries, some not-so-obvious things happen.

The first line (start_services) starts iscsi.service, iscsid.service and iscsiuio.service. All using systemd.

The second line (getIBFT) reads the iBFT configuration, so its values are then known to the YaST libraries.

So far, so good. :-)

The next line (checkInitiatorName) does not-so-nice things:

• First it replaces the content from /etc/iscsi/initiatorname.iscsi with the value from iBFT
• Then it stops iscsid.service using systemd.
• Then it executes iscsiadm -m session until the daemon runs. No direct invocation to systemctl start.

The next line (getConfig) reads the configuration if it's not already read. I see no trace of its execution in the logs. So I guess nothing special to mention here.

The last line (autoLogOn) tries to login via iscsiadm -m fw -l but it fails. I guess it is fair to assume that's caused by how checkInitiatorName messed with the services.