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Script Author: Terrence Houlahan, Linux & Network Engineer F1Linux.com
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Author Site: http://www.F1Linux.com
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Script Version: 1.11.05
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Script Date: 20240408
These scripts and others by the author can be found at:
These scripts automate- as much as reasonably possible- the grunt work of configuring an UBUNTU host to connect to an iSCSI disk on boot and then mount it.
The original use case for writing these scripts was for configuring Raspberry Pi's- the 8GB models- to run Docker applications on 64bit Ubuntu. Frequent writes to a Pi's MicroSD card will hammer it, so I wanted to load a chunk of iSCSI storage for operations requiring frequent writes. iSCSI doesn't write to the local filesystem.
Creating the required systemd service & systemd mount on a bunch of Pi's manually was just donkey work, so I automated the configuration. Anyhoo, these scripts are generally useful and with a (small) bit of tweaking could be adapted to enterprise use for any version of Linux using systemd; knock yourselves out.
Creates a systemd service connect-luns.service to connect the LUN on boot. It also checks to see that the open-iscsi package is installed as well as checking if the OS is Ubuntu
Creates systemd services mnt-logs.mount and mnt-logs.automount to mount the iscsi disk on boot in /mnt - consistent with FHS guidance. The automount service is additionally configured for the sake of completeness: it's not required as it's is actually for mounting on-demand whereas we just want to mount the external storage on boot.
- Partition the conected iSCSI disk
- Format the iSCSI disk with a filesystem
These scripts were developed using Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and should just work out of the box with other versions of Ubuntu and other Debian derivatives.
Where RHEL or Red Hat derivatives are being used, some tweaking with the package management parts of the script will of course require modification.
But the Systemd stuff and anything which is straight bash should "just work" and be largely distribution independent.
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STEP 0: Create some LUNs on your storage box. Even a cheap Synology SoHo storage appliance can export LUNs. Configuring CHAP authentication on LUNs is highly recommended.
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STEP 1: Image a Pi with Ubuntu
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STEP 2: Download these scripts as your standard user- ie 'ubuntu'- into your home directory:
git clone https://github.com/f1linux/iscsi-automount.git cd iscsi-automount -
STEP 3: Set required values in "SET VARIABLES" section of
config-iscsi-storage.shand then execute it:sudo ./config-iscsi-storage.sh -
STEP 4: Partition the iSCSI disk after it connects to the Linux host: ie,
fdisk /dev/sdXwhere "X" is the letter of the iSCSI disk -
STEP 5: Format the iSCSI disk with a filesystem: ie,
mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdX1where the iSCSI disk is /dev/sdX -
STEP 6: Set required values in "SET VARIABLES" section of
config-iscsi-storage-mounts.shand then execute it:sudo ./config-iscsi-storage-mounts.shWARNING: Do NOT use a hyphen when specifying the folder name in the variable "ISCSIDISKMOUNTFOLDER" in "config-iscsi-storage-mounts.sh". A folder name with a hypen with cause the SystemD mount to fail.
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STEP 7: Reboot and execute the
mountcommand to verify that the iSCSI disk mounted on boot.
mnt-logs.mount: uses the "After=" directive creating a dependency on the connect-luns.service; if the LUN isn't connected, there's nothing to mount! So where the connect-luns.service fails, then the mnt-logs.mount service will also be broken.
mnt-logs.automount: This service relies on the mnt-logs.mount service to be correct. If it's not, then the mnt-logs.automount will of course fail. But the primary use case I wrote the scripts for was to automate bringing the LUN up on boot in our host & mounting it rather than mounting it conditionally when a process needed to write to it.
To start or check the status of the custom systemd services created by these scripts:
sudo systemctl [start/status] connect-luns.service
sudo systemctl [start/status] mnt-logs.mount
sudo systemctl [start/status] mnt-logs.automount
These scripts are licensed under GPL 3.0.