CAM(4) BSD Kernel Interfaces Manual CAM(4)NAME
CAM — Common Access Method SCSI/ATA subsystem
SYNOPSIS
device scbus
device ada
device cd
device ch
device da
device pass
device pt
device sa
options CAMDEBUG
options CAM_DEBUG_BUS=-1
options CAM_DEBUG_TARGET=-1
options CAM_DEBUG_LUN=-1
options CAM_DEBUG_FLAGS=CAM_DEBUG_INFO|CAM_DEBUG_CDB
options CAM_MAX_HIGHPOWER=4
options SCSI_NO_SENSE_STRINGS
options SCSI_NO_OP_STRINGS
options SCSI_DELAY=8000
DESCRIPTION
The CAM subsystem provides a uniform and modular system for the implemen‐
tation of drivers to control various SCSI and ATA devices, and to utilize
different SCSI and ATA host adapters through host adapter drivers. When
the system probes busses, it attaches any devices it finds to the appro‐
priate drivers. The pass(4) driver, if it is configured in the kernel,
will attach to all devices.
KERNEL CONFIGURATION
There are a number of generic kernel configuration options for the CAM
subsystem:
CAMDEBUG This option enables the CAM debugging printf code.
This will not actually cause any debugging infor‐
mation to be printed out when included by itself.
Enabling printouts requires additional configura‐
tion. See below for details.
CAM_MAX_HIGHPOWER=4 This sets the maximum allowable number of concur‐
rent "high power" commands. A "high power" com‐
mand is a command that takes more electrical power
than most to complete. An example of this is the
SCSI START UNIT command. Starting a disk often
takes significantly more electrical power than
normal operation. This option allows the user to
specify how many concurrent high power commands
may be outstanding without overloading the power
supply on his computer.
SCSI_NO_SENSE_STRINGS This eliminates text descriptions of each SCSI
Additional Sense Code and Additional Sense Code
Qualifier pair. Since this is a fairly large text
database, eliminating it reduces the size of the
kernel somewhat. This is primarily necessary for
boot floppies and other low disk space or low mem‐
ory space environments. In most cases, though,
this should be enabled, since it speeds the inter‐
pretation of SCSI error messages. Do not let the
"kernel bloat" zealots get to you -- leave the
sense descriptions in your kernel!
SCSI_NO_OP_STRINGS This disables text descriptions of each SCSI
opcode. This option, like the sense string option
above, is primarily useful for environments like a
boot floppy where kernel size is critical.
Enabling this option for normal use is not recom‐
mended, since it slows debugging of SCSI problems.
SCSI_DELAY=8000 This is the SCSI "bus settle delay." In CAM, it
is specified in milliseconds, not seconds like the
old SCSI layer used to do. When the kernel boots,
it sends a bus reset to each SCSI bus to tell each
device to reset itself to a default set of trans‐
fer negotiations and other settings. Most SCSI
devices need some amount of time to recover from a
bus reset. Newer disks may need as little as
100ms, while old, slow devices may need much
longer. If the SCSI_DELAY is not specified, it
defaults to 2 seconds. The minimum allowable
value for SCSI_DELAY is "100", or 100ms. One spe‐
cial case is that if the SCSI_DELAY is set to 0,
that will be taken to mean the "lowest possible
value." In that case, the SCSI_DELAY will be
reset to 100ms.
All devices and busses support dynamic allocation so that an upper number
of devices and controllers does not need to be configured; device da will
suffice for any number of disk drivers.
The devices are either wired so they appear as a particular device unit
or counted so that they appear as the next available unused unit.
Units are wired down by setting kernel environment hints. This is usu‐
ally done either interactively from the loader(8), or automatically via
the /boot/device.hints file. The basic syntax is:
hint.device.unit.property="value"
Individual CAM bus numbers can be wired down to specific controllers with
a config line similar to the following:
hint.scbus.0.at="ahd1"
This assigns CAM bus number 0 to the ahd1 driver instance. For con‐
trollers supporting more than one bus, a particular bus can be assigned
as follows:
hint.scbus.0.at="ahc1"
hint.scbus.0.bus="1"
This assigns CAM bus 0 to the bus 1 instance on ahc0. Peripheral drivers
can be wired to a specific bus, target, and lun as so:
hint.da.0.at="scbus0"
hint.da.0.target="0"
hint.da.0.unit="0"
This assigns da0 to target 0, unit (lun) 0 of scbus 0. Omitting the tar‐
get or unit hints will instruct CAM to treat them as wildcards and use
the first respective counted instances. These examples can be combined
together to allow a peripheral device to be wired to any particular con‐
troller, bus, target, and/or unit instance.
When you have a mixture of wired down and counted devices then the count‐
ing begins with the first non-wired down unit for a particular type.
That is, if you have a disk wired down as device da1, then the first non-
wired disk shall come on line as da2.
ADAPTERS
The system allows common device drivers to work through many different
types of adapters. The adapters take requests from the upper layers and
do all IO between the SCSI or ATA bus and the system. The maximum size
of a transfer is governed by the adapter. Most adapters can transfer
64KB in a single operation, however many can transfer larger amounts.
TARGET MODE
Some adapters support target mode in which the system is capable of oper‐
ating as a device, responding to operations initiated by another system.
Target mode is supported for some adapters, but is not yet complete for
this version of the CAM SCSI subsystem.
FILES
see other CAM device entries.
DIAGNOSTICS
When the kernel is compiled with options CAMDEBUG, an XPT_DEBUG CCB can
be used to enable various amounts of tracing information on any specific
device. Devices not being traced will not produce trace information.
There are currently four debugging flags that may be turned on:
CAM_DEBUG_INFO This debugging flag enables general informational
printfs for the device or devices in question.
CAM_DEBUG_TRACE This debugging flag enables function-level command
flow tracing. i.e. kernel printfs will happen at the
entrance and exit of various functions.
CAM_DEBUG_SUBTRACE This debugging flag enables debugging output internal
to various functions.
CAM_DEBUG_CDB This debugging flag will cause the kernel to print
out all SCSI commands sent to a particular device or
devices.
Some of these flags, most notably CAM_DEBUG_TRACE and CAM_DEBUG_SUBTRACE
will produce kernel printfs in EXTREME numbers, and because of that, they
are not especially useful. There are not many things logged at the
CAM_DEBUG_INFO level, so it is not especially useful. The most useful
debugging flag is the CAM_DEBUG_CDB flag. Users can enable debugging
from their kernel config file, by using the following kernel config
options:
CAMDEBUG This enables CAM debugging. Without this option, users
will not even be able to turn on debugging from user‐
land via camcontrol(8).
CAM_DEBUG_FLAGS This allows the user to set the various debugging flags
described above in a kernel config file. Flags may be
ORed together if the user wishes to see printfs for
multiple debugging levels.
CAM_DEBUG_BUS Specify a bus to debug. To debug all busses, set this
to -1.
CAM_DEBUG_TARGET Specify a target to debug. To debug all targets, set
this to -1.
CAM_DEBUG_LUN Specify a lun to debug. To debug all luns, set this to
-1.
When specifying a bus, target or lun to debug, you MUST specify all three
bus/target/lun options above. Using wildcards, you should be able to
enable debugging on most anything.
Users may also enable debugging printfs on the fly, if the CAMDEBUG
option is their config file, by using the camcontrol(8) utility. See
camcontrol(8) for details.
SEE ALSOada(4), aha(4), ahb(4), ahc(4), ahci(4), ata(4), bt(4), cd(4), ch(4),
da(4), pass(4), pt(4), sa(4), xpt(4), camcontrol(8)HISTORY
The CAM SCSI subsystem first appeared in FreeBSD 3.0. The CAM ATA sup‐
port was added in FreeBSD 8.0.
AUTHORS
The CAM SCSI subsystem was written by Justin Gibbs and Kenneth Merry.
The CAM ATA support was added by Alexander Motin ⟨mav@FreeBSD.org⟩.
BSD March 4, 2010 BSD