Bug 2220881

Summary:	Update libiscsi packages to upstream
Product:	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9	Reporter:	Martin Hoyer <mhoyer>
Component:	libiscsi	Assignee:	Virtualization Maintenance <virt-maint>
Status:	CLOSED WONTFIX	QA Contact:	Tingting Mao <timao>
Severity:	low	Docs Contact:
Priority:	low
Version:	9.4	CC:	aliang, coli, jinzhao, juzhang, kwolf, pbonzini, vgoyal, virt-maint, ymankad
Target Milestone:	rc
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	Unspecified
OS:	Unspecified
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	If docs needed, set a value
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2023-08-09 16:27:12 UTC	Type:	Bug
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Martin Hoyer 2023-07-06 12:05:21 UTC

Description of problem:
The upstream repo has not created a release since Jul 14, 2019. From what I understand, users generally compile libiscsi from source rather than installing this outdated rpm. 
There is an updated specfile in Fedora, which is using a snapshot versioning, fixes README file and adds iscsi-pr tool.

Additional info:
I can create a MR from https://gitlab.com/mhoyer/libiscsi/-/tree/c9s if needed.

Comment 1 John Ferlan 2023-07-13 20:24:08 UTC

Unclear on our commitment to update our downstream libiscsi. It's not very active and no one is really "assigned" to keep it up to date. If you have a team willing to take this over, then feel free to get in touch with Yash Mankad the Virt Team Product Owner. 

The last package I think is: 1.19.0 from https://gitlab.com/redhat/centos-stream/rpms/libiscsi. Recent commit history https://gitlab.com/redhat/centos-stream/src/libiscsi/-/commits/c9s seems to show just keeping the build running and that's it.

It's been more or less abandoned and pulling in patches from upstream without a linkage to some layered product need or feature request doesn't seem feasible since we have no resources focused on libiscsi (dev, qe, build, support).

If 'iscsi-pr' is something related to Persistent Reservations, then I'm also aware that OpenShift Virtualization (CNV) will soon have a persistent reservation feature added. See:

Feature: https://issues.redhat.com/browse/CNV-25887  
EPIC: https://issues.redhat.com/browse/CNV-11239
Story: https://issues.redhat.com/browse/CNV-12543

It's a long way of saying, I doubt much changes from the Virt Team perspective. I'll leave it open for a little while, but it may close and move to a backlog.

Comment 2 John Ferlan 2023-08-09 16:27:12 UTC

Rather than wait for something that won't happen, I'm just closing this as WONTFIX at this point in time. 

If there's ever an upstream tag in https://github.com/sahlberg/libiscsi/tags that is more recent, we can look to revisit; however, given a lack of resources it will be challenging to commit to supporting a downstream libiscsi.

Comment 3 Martin Hoyer 2023-08-09 16:31:27 UTC

Understandable. Using copr for now https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/mhoyer/libiscsi/