[2018-09-12] release of sg3_utils version 1.44 . See sg3_utils page. The git mirror for sg3_utils contains a release tag for version 1.43 from 2016. So this release (1.44) contains minimal changes from yesterday and should remove any confusion.
[2018-09-11] release of sg3_utils version 1.43 . See sg3_utils page.
[2018-07-31] sg3_utils-1.43 rev 785 tarball, see sg3_utils page; sdparm-1.11 rev 320 tarball, see sdparm page, ddpt-0.96 rev 363, see ddpt page. https://github.com/doug-gilbert mirrors for sdparm and ddpt updated.
[2018-07-20] lsscsi-0.30 released, see lsscsi page.
[2018-05-26] The author's various SCSI related packages are now
mirrored on github.com . The
primary repositories remain in subversion on the author's equipment.
The sg3_utils and lsscsi
packages are mirrored on Hannes Reinecke's site at github :
https://github.com/hreinecke/sg3_utils
in the master (default) branch. The author continues to track
progress with a subversion revision number which is a sequential
number currently at 774 for sg3_utils. The github sg3_utils package's
ChangeLog
file shows where the mirror is "at" and currently that is
revision 742 xxxxx dated 20180102, several commits behind the
author's repository. The other sg3_utils git branches may be of
interest to users and relate to Hannes' work at SUSE Labs. Most work
in those other branches will be merged into the master branch in
time. Also found at that location is the lsscsi
mirror. Both packages may have later versions on this site (as
tarballs in the Downloads section of the links given above). So it
might be worthwhile to check both locations.
The author
also has a github account at https://github.com/doug-gilbert
which has mirrors for sdparm, ddpt
and smp_utils packages. Since sdparm and
ddpt depend on a library from sg3_utils, a partial package called
sg3_utils_lib is also there. sg3_utils_lib only contains the lib/
and include/ sub-directories from the
sg3_utils package. Currently sg3_utils_lib corresponds to version 774
of the author's sg3_utils subversion repository and the sdparm and
ddpt packages assume that revision. So it is better to build sdparm
and ddpt with sg3_utils_lib than with Hannes' sg3_utils repository
(because it is currently two revisions behind).
So, for
example to build sdparm, clone the github sdparm and sg3_utils_lib
repositories to the build machine; then from sg3_utils_lib clone,
copy the include/ and lib/
directories with those names and contents over to the sdparm clone,
under the main directory. So that main directory should end up at
least containing these sub-directories: src/,
doc/, lib/ and
include/. The sdparm package should be then
ready to build. IMO, contrary to much online propaganda, git is not
better in all respects than subversion, especially for
non-distributed development. In this case the author uses
subversion's "externals" feature to include the library
sub-tree of sg3_utils in the source trees of sdparm and ddpt. There
is no exact parallel to this feature in git.
Packages will
still have major releases done through this site. For example, that
will be release 1.43 for sg3_utils . The release will be source
tarballs and Debian and Redhat packages for Linux. There will also be
a tarball of Windows executable(s) typically built with MinGW. Also
there is an attempt to publicise the releases on related newsgroups
(e.g. Note that the subversion revision number stops increasing in
the ChangeLog once a release has been made, and a new paragraph will
appear at the top of the ChangeLog when revisions are committed for
the next release.
[2014-09-30] update tools
page: brief summary of various storage/scsi tools
[2010-09-13]
add device naming page
[2008-10-01]
sg pages find a new home at http://sg.danny.cz/sg/
The Linux sg driver is a upper level SCSI subsystem device driver
that is used primarily to handle devices _not_ covered by the other
upper level drivers: sd (disks), st (tapes) and sr (CDROMs and DVDs).
The sg driver is used for enclosure management, cd writers,
applications that read cd audio digitally and scanners. Sg can also
be used for less usual tasks performed on disks, tapes and cdroms. Sg
is a character device driver which, in some contexts, gives it
advantages over block device drivers such as sd and sr. The interface
of sg is at the level of SCSI command requests and their associated
responses.
The term SCSI has several meaning depending on
the context. This leads to confusion. One practical way of defining
it today is everything that the T10 INCITS committee controls, see
www.t10.org . Probably the most
succinct overview is this standards architecture page
. For practical purposes a "SCSI device" in Linux is any
device that uses the Linux SCSI subsystem and this often includes
SATA disks.
From about Linux kernel 2.6.24, there is an
alternate SCSI pass-through driver called "bsg" (block SCSI
generic driver). The bsg driver has device names of the form
/dev/bsg/0:1:2:3 and supports the SG_IO ioctl with the sg version 3
interface. The bsg driver also supports the sg version 4 interface
which at this time the sg driver does not. Amongst other improvements
the sg version 4 interface supports SCSI bidirectional commands. All
recent "sg" user space packages (i.e. sg3_utils, sdparm,
ddpt and smp_utils) work equally well on both sg and bsg device
names.
The original driver was written by Lawrence Foard in 1992 and remained unchanged for several years. In August 1998 Heiko Eissfeldt and Joerg Schilling started working on enhancements to this driver. Soon after, the author became involved and these efforts culminated in a new sg driver being placed in Linux kernel 2.2.6 which was released on 16th April 1999. It contains the first major upgrade to the SCSI generic packet device driver ("sg") since 1992. This new driver has a super-set of the original interface and the semantics of the implementation are very similar. Hence it offers a high degree of backward compatibility with the original driver.
The major reason for introducing a new sg driver into the 2.2 series of kernels was the problem that the original device driver was having finding memory. This driver improves the situation by using scatter gather, memory above the 16 MBytes level and memory from the scsi dma pool as appropriate. Other drivers were affected by these memory problems (especially those associated with ISA hardware). In kernel 2.2.10 H.J. Lu introduced a new kernel memory allocator that alleviated many of these memory problems.
On 4th January 2001 the Linux 2.4.0 kernel was introduced and it contained the "version 3" sg driver that is described below.
On 17th December 2003 the Linux 2.6.0 kernel was introduced and it also contained the "version 3" sg driver that is described below. The SG_IO ioctl was implemented in the block layer and in several other "char" SCSI drivers (e.g. the st driver for tapes). Hence many programs can use primary device nodes (e.g. /dev/hdd for an ATAPI cd/dvd writer) to send SCSI command via the SG_IO ioctl. The sg driver still permits a clean pass through interface to all devices that use the Linux SCSI subsystem.
The following enhancements have been added (in lk 2.2.6): scatter gather, command queueing, per file descriptor sequencing (was per device) and asynchronous notification. Scatter gather allows large buffers (previously limited to 128 KB on i386) to be used. Scatter gather is also a lot more "kernel friendly". The original driver used a single large buffer which made it impossible to run 2 or more sg-based applications at the same time. With the new driver a buffer is reserved for each file descriptor guaranteeing that at least that buffer size will be available for each request on the file descriptor. A user may request a larger buffer size on any particular request but runs the (usually remote) risk of an out of memory (ENOMEM) error.
A "version 3" sg driver was introduced in Linux kernel
2.4.0 . It adds a new interface that allows more control over SCSI
commands and returns more information about their performance. This
driver is present in Linux kernel 2.4.0 . A separate version with
reduced capabilities is available for the 2.2 series kernels.
Features include: a simplified SG_IO ioctl, larger sense buffer,
residual DMA count, 16 byte (or longer) commands, direct IO support,
command duration timing and a "proc_fs" interface.
Naturally it is backward compatible with applications based on the sg
interface in the lk 2.2 series and earlier.
In the lk 2.6
series the SG_IO ioctl has been replicated (with a slightly reduced
feature set) in the block subsystem. This allows the SG_IO ioctl to
be used on block devices such as /dev/sda and /dev/scd0. In lk 2.6.6
the SG_IO ioctl became available in the st upper level SCSI subsystem
driver (for tapes). See the sg_io page.
The following table summarizes the different versions of the sg device driver that are available. If you wish to use one of these tarballs then untar it in /usr/src/linux (or wherever the top of your kernel tree is). As a precaution you may wish to copy the files include/scsi/sg.h and drivers/scsi/sg.c to other names. This will facilitate reversing the patch if required. For information about the differences between versions see the history section at the top of the include/scsi/sg.h file.
Table 1. sg device drivers
|
Sg driver |
Notes |
|
sg version 3.0.19 |
sg version 3 backported to lk 2.2 |
|
sg version 1.5.01 |
sg version 1 (original) ported to lk 2.4 |
|
|
|
|
documentation and notes |
|
|
bug fix |
|
|
bug fix, found in lk 2.4.23->26 |
|
|
version found in lk 2.4.28 |
|
|
version found in lk 2.4.29,30,31,32 |
|
|
|
|
|
driver found in 2.6.11 |
|
|
driver found in 2.6.13 |
|
|
driver found in 2.6.16 |
|
|
driver found in 2.6.18 |
|
|
proposed additions including scatter_elem_sz attribute |
For the Linux kernel 2.2 series, the current
production version of the sg driver is 2.1.39 . All sg drivers for
the 2.2 series of kernels (including the original) are
interchangeable (but see final section on this page about Red Hat 6.2
and Mandrake 7.1). So, for example, sg22orig.tgz can be put in lk
2.2.17 while, on the other hand, sg2140.tgz can be put in lk 2.2.0 .
For the Linux kernel 2.4 series, the current production version of sg is 3.1.25 (in lk 2.4.23->32).
For the Linux kernel 2.6 series, the current production version of sg is 3.5.34 .
Older versions can be obtained from this directory. A sub directory called "original" contains the original driver (i.e. prior to linux kernel 2.2.6) and its HOWTO document.
These packages contain multiple utilities, all with command line
interfaces. They send one one more SCSI commands to the nominated
device and output the response including error reports if the command
failed. The name of the SCSI command executed is typically reflected
in the name of the utility; for example: "sg_inq" sends a
SCSI INQUIRY command and decodes its response. These utilities were
originally written for the Linux operating system. In sg3_utils
version 1.19 a subset of the utilities were ported to FreeBSD and
Tru64; in version 1.22 a similar subset of the utilities were ported
to Windows; and in version 1.24 a Solaris port was added.
The
most recent package is called sg3_utils and it uses the sg
"version 3" interface (sometimes known as the SG_IO
interface) in linux. This interface is in lk 2.4.0 and later
kernels, including the lk 2.6, 3 and 4 series. All new features are
being added into sg3_utils (i.e. it is still
being actively developed). Many of the utilities in sg3_utils
(versions >= 1.02) can be used directly on block devices (e.g.
sg_inq /dev/sda) in the lk 2.6 series.
The sg_dd utility is at a slightly higher
level issuing SCSI READ and WRITE commands to copy data, mimicking
the Unix dd command. See the sg3_utils
package page for more details.
The older (and original) package is called sg_utils and it uses the sg version 2 interface found linux kernel version 2.2.6 and onward. Over half of those utilities will also work on the original sg device driver (at least back to the lk 2.0 series). If required, "make common" will produce the subset that will work on the whole lk 2.x series. Since the sg "version 3" device driver still maintains the original interface, the sg_utils package will continue to work in the lk 2.4 and lk 2.6 series . This package is now in maintenance mode, only bugs will be fixed. See this page for more details.
The latest versions, packaged in tarballs, source, binary rpms and debian packages are given in the following table. They contain README and CHANGELOG files and man pages. The tarball contains a "spec" file for building rpms and a debian directory containing build information. Here is the most recently released sg3_utils CHANGELOG .
Table 2.
sg3_utils/sg_utils tarballs and packages
|
|
tarballs |
rpm source rpms |
i386 rpm binaries |
debian packages |
|
sg3_utils |
|
|
sg3-utils_1.44-0.1_amd64.deb |
|
|
sg_utils |
|
See the sg3_utils page for more
packages (e.g. 64 bit versions of Debian, Redhat and Windows binary
packages) plus older versions.
Following are some links to related pages on this site:
Full sg version 3 documentation for lk 2.4 series is now available. It is in DocBook format (html rendering): sg_v3_ho.html (ps, pdf and text renderings also in same directory). This document is also available as LDP's SCSI-Generic-HOWTO Here is documentation specific to the sg_io ioctl, especially in the lk 2.6 series.
Older Sg version 3 documentation for lk 2.4 series (now superseded by the DocBook version above)
lsscsi command for the lk 2.6 series. Lists SCSI devices or SCSI hosts.
sdparm utility to view and change mode pages, view VPD pages and send commands (for lk 2.6 and 2.4 series)
ddpt utility which is dd-like which is able to access SCSI devices at the SCSI command level
sg3_utils package of utilities that send SCSI commands
smp_utils package of utilities for Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) SMP functions
the tools page contains information about many scsi/storage packages from various sources
Some notes about the "version 3" sg driver found in the lk 2.4 series (including mmap notes).
scsi_debug LLD (adapter) driver for simulating lots of disk and doing tests in the lk 2.6 and lk 3 series. Here is the scsi_debug driver for the lk 2.4 series.
scsi_ses LLD (adapter) driver for simulating an enclosure services (SES) device.
Timings for direct and indirect IO (as used by sg); these are old and should be updated
Some fast copy options for disks (including raw devices)
devfs and SCSI in lk 2.3.46 and the lk 2.4 series. Devfs has been replaced by udev and hotplug in the lk 2.6 series
description of the Linux SCSI subsystem in the lk 2.4 series. There is a single page html rendering: SCSI-2.4-HOWTO.html plus ps, pdf and text renderings in the same directory. This document has become the LDP's SCSI-2.4-HOWTO . The version on this site may be more recent.
linux 2.6 series SCSI mid to lower level API document can be found in the Documentation/scsi/scsi_mid_low_api.txt file in the kernel source tree.
smartmontools for SCSI article .
Abridged and longer documentation for sg driver in lk 2.2 series (describes sg version 2.1.39)
A FAQ including current project status, bug fixes and other useful patches
Here are some useful links to related information held at other sites:
www.t10.org is a very important site for SCSI related information. It contains SCSI 2 and 3 draft standards.
every wonder what all those acronyms mean and how they relate, see this diagram at t10.org .
www.scsita.org is the SCSI Trade Association. There is an interesting tutorial on Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) there.
www.andante.org/scsi.html is Eric Youngdale's site. Eric is primarily responsible for the Linux SCSI architecture and its mid-level implementation in the 2.2 and 2.4 series of kernels
Kurt Garloff has several pages with Linux SCSI themes (including the scsidev, scsiinfo and rescan-scsi-bus programs).
The Scsi Command Utility (scu) is quite comprehensive and is ported to several OSes including Linux. Its home page can be found here .
The newsgroup linux-scsi@vger.kernel.org is the appropriate place to discuss Linux SCSI related issues.
The MAINTAINERS source file in the top level of the linux kernel source tree contains up to date information about who maintains what and where information can be found. Links to SCSI adapter information are also in that file. SCSI documentation within the kernel source has been moved to the Documentation/scsi directory in the lk 2.6 series.
Douglas
Gilbert can be emailed at that address.
Last updated: 12th
September 2018, 19:00 [UTC-4]