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I have 2 systems, with a Broadcom BCM5701 and a LSI7202p, of which are connected with a LC->SC cable. The cards are properly detected in Linux, however I wish to set up IP over FC. I've read online that this is possible, however I haven't actually seen any examples of anyone getting it set up on Linux. Is this even possible?

Any help would be appreciated.

EDIT: I've looked into it, and it's really easy to set up in OpenSolaris. However, I'm hoping to be able to use Linux for this.

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  • Can you give me some clues for OpenSolaris, as I am trying to achieve this on OmniOS and drawing a blank. Feb 24, 2020 at 5:52

2 Answers 2

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Yes it's possible (it's RFC2625) , I did this ONCE to get me out of a major problem I was having at a remote site and although it worked well enough to allow me to transfer the driver file that had me locked out of the box in all other ways I can't say I'd recommend it.

Sure it'll be fast and reliable but it was crazy complex to setup and maintain so I'd suggest you review why you want to do this rather than the more routine IP over Ethernet?

As for how to do it, well I'm getting old and I did this about 18-24 months ago so the relavent brain-cells must have died because I've forgotten but I did use THIS link plus a hell of a lot of googling around. Reckon it took me 6 hours of messing about by the way.

As I say, you can do it but I'm not sure you should.

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    I'm in a position where it's much easier to set up FC than Ethernet, as I have 2gbit FC cards and cables whereas I don't have gbit ethernet hardware.
    – Eli
    Aug 13, 2011 at 21:42
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Usually you have to enable it on the switch (usually goes with an extra license and some $$$). Also your HBA has to have support for IPFC. It might be that you need to have a switch in between the HBAs. After you enabled it on the switch you basically need the proper HBA driver wich will bring up the device. As described in the link Chopper3 provided most HBA drivers seem to be dropping the IPFC code.

If the driver supports that ie the bfa drivers (for Brocade HBAs) will output something like this in modinfo:

# modinfo bfa
filename:       /lib/modules/2.6.27.19-5-default/updates/bfa.ko
version:        2.3.0.0
author:         Brocade Communications Systems, Inc.
description:    Brocade Fibre Channel HBA Driver fcpim ipfc

Which tells you that fcpim, ipfc (fibre channel protocol initiator mode and IPFC) are supported.

A word of warning: It seems that Linux has dropped the IPFC stack support, so the HBA driver won't bring up the proper device.

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  • The HBA's support it. However, I'm using point-to-point and not through a switch.
    – Eli
    Aug 13, 2011 at 21:38

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