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+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
+<!DOCTYPE book PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.1.2//EN"
+ "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.1.2/docbookx.dtd" []>
+
+<book id="scsidrivers">
+ <bookinfo>
+ <title>SCSI Subsystem Interfaces</title>
+
+ <authorgroup>
+ <author>
+ <firstname>Douglas</firstname>
+ <surname>Gilbert</surname>
+ <affiliation>
+ <address>
+ <email>dgilbert@interlog.com</email>
+ </address>
+ </affiliation>
+ </author>
+ </authorgroup>
+ <pubdate>2003-08-11</pubdate>
+
+ <copyright>
+ <year>2002</year>
+ <year>2003</year>
+ <holder>Douglas Gilbert</holder>
+ </copyright>
+
+ <legalnotice>
+ <para>
+ This documentation is free software; you can redistribute
+ it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public
+ License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
+ version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later
+ version.
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ This program is distributed in the hope that it will be
+ useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied
+ warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+ See the GNU General Public License for more details.
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public
+ License along with this program; if not, write to the Free
+ Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston,
+ MA 02111-1307 USA
+ </para>
+
+ <para>
+ For more details see the file COPYING in the source
+ distribution of Linux.
+ </para>
+ </legalnotice>
+
+ </bookinfo>
+
+<toc></toc>
+
+ <chapter id="intro">
+ <title>Introduction</title>
+ <para>
+This document outlines the interface between the Linux scsi mid level
+and lower level drivers. Lower level drivers are variously called HBA
+(host bus adapter) drivers, host drivers (HD) or pseudo adapter drivers.
+The latter alludes to the fact that a lower level driver may be a
+bridge to another IO subsystem (and the "ide-scsi" driver is an example
+of this). There can be many lower level drivers active in a running
+system, but only one per hardware type. For example, the aic7xxx driver
+controls adaptec controllers based on the 7xxx chip series. Most lower
+level drivers can control one or more scsi hosts (a.k.a. scsi initiators).
+ </para>
+<para>
+This document can been found in an ASCII text file in the linux kernel
+source: <filename>Documentation/scsi/scsi_mid_low_api.txt</filename> .
+It currently hold a little more information than this document. The
+<filename>drivers/scsi/hosts.h</filename> and <filename>
+drivers/scsi/scsi.h</filename> headers contain descriptions of members
+of important structures for the scsi subsystem.
+</para>
+ </chapter>
+
+ <chapter id="driver-struct">
+ <title>Driver structure</title>
+ <para>
+Traditionally a lower level driver for the scsi subsystem has been
+at least two files in the drivers/scsi directory. For example, a
+driver called "xyz" has a header file "xyz.h" and a source file
+"xyz.c". [Actually there is no good reason why this couldn't all
+be in one file.] Some drivers that have been ported to several operating
+systems (e.g. aic7xxx which has separate files for generic and
+OS-specific code) have more than two files. Such drivers tend to have
+their own directory under the drivers/scsi directory.
+ </para>
+ <para>
+scsi_module.c is normally included at the end of a lower
+level driver. For it to work a declaration like this is needed before
+it is included:
+<programlisting>
+ static Scsi_Host_Template driver_template = DRIVER_TEMPLATE;
+ /* DRIVER_TEMPLATE should contain pointers to supported interface
+ functions. Scsi_Host_Template is defined hosts.h */
+ #include "scsi_module.c"
+</programlisting>
+ </para>
+ <para>
+The scsi_module.c assumes the name "driver_template" is appropriately
+defined. It contains 2 functions:
+<orderedlist>
+<listitem><para>
+ init_this_scsi_driver() called during builtin and module driver
+ initialization: invokes mid level's scsi_register_host()
+</para></listitem>
+<listitem><para>
+ exit_this_scsi_driver() called during closedown: invokes
+ mid level's scsi_unregister_host()
+</para></listitem>
+</orderedlist>
+ </para>
+<para>
+When a new, lower level driver is being added to Linux, the following
+files (all found in the drivers/scsi directory) will need some attention:
+Makefile, Config.help and Config.in . It is probably best to look at what
+an existing lower level driver does in this regard.
+</para>
+ </chapter>
+
+ <chapter id="intfunctions">
+ <title>Interface Functions</title>
+!EDocumentation/scsi/scsi_mid_low_api.txt
+ </chapter>
+
+ <chapter id="locks">
+ <title>Locks</title>
+<para>
+Each Scsi_Host instance has a spin_lock called Scsi_Host::default_lock
+which is initialized in scsi_register() [found in hosts.c]. Within the
+same function the Scsi_Host::host_lock pointer is initialized to point
+at default_lock with the scsi_assign_lock() function. Thereafter
+lock and unlock operations performed by the mid level use the
+Scsi_Host::host_lock pointer.
+</para>
+<para>
+Lower level drivers can override the use of Scsi_Host::default_lock by
+using scsi_assign_lock(). The earliest opportunity to do this would
+be in the detect() function after it has invoked scsi_register(). It
+could be replaced by a coarser grain lock (e.g. per driver) or a
+lock of equal granularity (i.e. per host). Using finer grain locks
+(e.g. per scsi device) may be possible by juggling locks in
+queuecommand().
+</para>
+ </chapter>
+
+ <chapter id="changes">
+ <title>Changes since lk 2.4 series</title>
+<para>
+io_request_lock has been replaced by several finer grained locks. The lock
+relevant to lower level drivers is Scsi_Host::host_lock and there is one
+per scsi host.
+</para>
+<para>
+The older error handling mechanism has been removed. This means the
+lower level interface functions abort() and reset() have been removed.
+</para>
+<para>
+In the 2.4 series the scsi subsystem configuration descriptions were
+aggregated with the configuration descriptions from all other Linux
+subsystems in the Documentation/Configure.help file. In the 2.5 series,
+the scsi subsystem now has its own (much smaller) drivers/scsi/Config.help
+file.
+</para>
+ </chapter>
+
+ <chapter id="credits">
+ <title>Credits</title>
+<para>
+The following people have contributed to this document:
+<orderedlist>
+<listitem><para>
+Mike Anderson <email>andmike@us.ibm.com</email>
+</para></listitem>
+<listitem><para>
+James Bottomley <email>James.Bottomley@steeleye.com</email>
+</para></listitem>
+<listitem><para>
+Patrick Mansfield <email>patmans@us.ibm.com</email>
+</para></listitem>
+</orderedlist>
+</para>
+ </chapter>
+
+</book>