Is it possible to use a 1394 disk drive from two hosts simultaneously?
Yes, provided the drive accepts multiple initiators, i.e. concurrent logins. If in doubt, ask the manufacturer of the disk enclosure before purchase. So far, only disks which are based on SBP-2 bridge chips from Oxford Semiconductor are known to support up to 2 or 4 concurrent logins, at least with Oxford Semi’s reference firmware. At the time of this writing, SBP-2 bridge chips from all other manufacturers (Initio, LSI, Prolific, Texas Instruments…) are known to not support multiple initiators. See also: Mailinglist discussions from 04/2006, 10/2006, 01/2007. Further requirements: All hosts run Linux, the non-exclusive login option of sbp2 or firewire-sbp2 is used, and you take care for write locking and cache consistency, e.g. through a cluster filesystem. Oracle has an article that explains using Linux 1394 with the Oracle Cluster File System. However, this is usually more difficult and troublesome than one expects or desires. Therefore, we recommend to use SBP-2 from one host onl
