Updating the Linux iSCSI Service to Restart Automatically
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure supports iSCSI attached remote boot and block volumes to compute instances. These iSCSI attached volumes are managed by the Linux iSCSI initiator service, iscsid
. In scenarios where this service is stopped for any reason, such as the service crashes or a system administrator inadvertently stops the service, it's important that this service is automatically restarted immediately.
The following platform images distributed by Oracle Cloud Infrastructure are configured so that the iscsid
service restarts automatically:
- Oracle Autonomous Linux 8 images
- Oracle Autonomous Linux 7 images
- Oracle Linux 9 images
- Oracle Linux 8 images
- Oracle Linux Cloud Developer 8 images
- Oracle Linux 7 images released February 26, 2019 and later. Refer to the release notes for Oracle-Linux-7.6-Gen2-GPU-2019.02.20-0 and Oracle-Linux-7.6-2019.02.20-0.
- Oracle Linux 6 images released February 26, 2019 and later. Refer to the release notes for Oracle-Linux-6.10-2019.02.22-0.
-
CentOS 7 images released February 25, 2019 and later. Refer to the release notes for CentOS-7-2019.02.23-0.
Instances created from earlier versions of CentOS 7.x, CentOS Stream 8, and Oracle Linux
platform images, or any versions of Ubuntu platform images, do not have this
configuration. You should update these existing instances and custom images created from
these images so that the iscsid
service restarts automatically. You
should also check this configuration on your imported paravirtualized custom images and
any instances launched from these images and update the configuration as needed.
This topic describes how to update the iscsid
service on an instance so that it will restart automatically.
Configuring an instance to automatically restart the
iscsid
service does not require a reboot and will increase the stability of your infrastructure.Oracle Linux 7
To update the iscsid
service on Oracle 7 Linux instances, run the following command:
sudo yum update -y iscsi-initiator-utils
After running this command, the version of the iscsid
service should be 6.2.0.874 or later.
To check the version, run the following command:
yum info iscsi-initiator-utils
This update does not require a system reboot and will not make any changes to the instances beyond configuring iscsid
to restart automatically.
Oracle Linux 6
To update the iscsid
service on Oracle Linux 6 instances, run the following command:
sudo yum update -y iscsi-initiator-utils
After running this command, the version of the iscsid
service should be 6.2.0.873 or later.
To check the version, run the following command:
yum info iscsi-initiator-utils
This update does not require a system reboot and will not make any changes to the instances beyond configuring iscsid
to restart automatically.
CentOS 7.x
Do not directly edit the
systemd
iscsid.service file. You should instead create an override to ensure that the restart
option isn't overwritten the next time the iscsid
service is updated.To create an override file on CentOS 7 instances, run the following command:
sudo systemctl edit iscsid.service
Paste and save the following into the file:
[Service]
Restart=always
To reload systemd
and restart the iscsid
service, run the following commands:
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl restart iscsid
CentOS Stream 8
Do not directly edit the
systemd
iscsid.service file. You should instead create an override to ensure that the restart
option isn't overwritten the next time the iscsid
service is updated.To create an override file on CentOS Stream 8 instances, run the following command:
sudo systemctl edit iscsid.service
Paste and save the following into the file:
[Service]
Restart=always
To reload systemd
and restart the iscsid
service, run the following commands:
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl restart iscsid
Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04, Ubuntu 22.04
Do not directly edit the
systemd
iscsid.service file. You should instead create an override to ensure that the restart
option isn't overwritten the next time the iscsid
service is updated.To create an override file on Ubuntu 18.04 and Ubuntu 20.04 instances, run the following command:
sudo systemctl edit iscsid.service
Paste and save the following into the file:
[Service]
Restart=
Restart=always
To reload systemd
and restart the iscsid
service, run the following commands:
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl restart iscsid
Testing the iscsid Service Update
Perform these steps to verify that the iscsid
service has been updated successfully, and that it restarts automatically.
Do not perform these steps on a production instance. If the
iscsid
service fails to restart, the instance might become unresponsive. -
To confirm that the
iscsid
service is running, run the following command:ps -ef | grep iscsid
-
To stop the
iscsid
service, run the following command:sudo pkill -9 iscsid
-
Wait 60 seconds. Then, run the following command to verify that the
iscsid
service has restarted:ps -ef | grep iscsid