In addition to turning your Fedora 18 box into an iSCSI target, LIO also supports other SCSI transport layers (‘fabrics’), such as Fibre Channel, with the qla2xxx fabric.

The most crucial bit is to verify that the qla2xxx driver has initiator mode disabled — it should be operating in target mode only. You can check this with:

cat /sys/module/qla2xxx/parameters/qlini_mode

It should say ‘disabled’. If it doesn’t, create a file called /usr/lib/modprobe.d/qla2xxx.conf and put:

options qla2xxx qlini_mode=disabled

in it. Then, run ‘dracut -f’ to rebuild your initrd, and reboot.

Some of you may be wondering: why /usr/lib/modprobe.d instead of /etc/modprobe.d ? This is because qla2xxx is likely loaded from the kernel’s initial ramdisk (initrd), and dracut, the initrd building tool, omits “host-specific” settings in /etc/modprobe.d. While you’re mucking around, also make sure the firmware package for your qla device, such as ql2200-firmware or similar, is also installed.

targetcli won’t let you create a qla2xxx fabric if qlini_mode is wrong. Once it lets you create the qla fabric, you can add luns to it and grant access permissions to acls exactly in the same manner as the other LIO fabrics.