Driver Compatibility

Users of udev have device nodes like /dev/etherd/e0.0 created for them
automatically, as needed. These are dynamic device nodes.  The aoe
driver version 50 and above use dynamic device node minor numbers in
order to support a greater number of AoE devices.

Some systems use static device nodes, which are present in /dev
regardless of what AoE devices are really available to the system. The
aoetools contain the aoe-mkdevs and aoe-mkshelf commands, which create
these static device nodes.

If the static device nodes do not match the static device minor
numbers in the kernel, you could accidentally perform reads and writes
to the wrong AoE device.  (It really is easier to let udev take care
of the device nodes.)

If you use an aoe driver from the CORAID website
(http://support.coraid.com/support/linux/) then just use the aoetools that
come bundled with that deiver.  If you don't have udev, make sure you
always load the aoe module with the aoe_dyndevs=0 option for any
driver version above 49.

If you didn't get your aoe driver from the CORAID website, and you
can't use udev, then here's what to do:

    * Of course, read the README file in the aoetools sources.

    * To use aoetools-8 and later with older 2.6 kernels (2.6.13 and
      earlier), build the aoetools with an extra parameter for "make",
      like this:

        make NPERSHELF=10

    * Using aoetools-7 and earlier with newer kernels (2.6.14 and
      later) is not recommended.

Other combinations should work with the default settings.