68 lines
2.8 KiB
Groff
68 lines
2.8 KiB
Groff
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Subject: ANNOUNCE: mdadm 2.5 - A tool for managing Soft RAID under Linux
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I am pleased to announce the availability of
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mdadm version 2.5
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It is available at the usual places:
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http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~neilb/source/mdadm/
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and
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http://www.{countrycode}.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/raid/mdadm/
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mdadm is a tool for creating, managing and monitoring
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device arrays using the "md" driver in Linux, also
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known as Software RAID arrays.
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Release 2.5 adds a host of minor updates and one major update.
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The major update involves an "Auto Assemble" function which will,
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with certainly limits, scan all available devices for anything that
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looks like an md array, and will try to assemble it.
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This code should be treated with some caution as it is very new,
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and could be revised in future, though hopefully not very much.
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The main problem I have always had will auto-assembly is that it
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is too easy for it to assemble thing that you don't want assembled,
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e.g. if you have moved some devices from a different computer.
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To remove this problem, arrays can now be tagged for the computer
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that is their home (homehost) and only arrays with the correct
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homehost will be auto-assembled.
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Feedback on the effectiveness and usefulness of this feature and it's
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documentation is encouraged.
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Changelog Entries:
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- Support 'mailfrom' line in mdadm.conf so the From: line in alert
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emails can be explicitly set.
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- Arrange that SparesMissing (which is similar in import to
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DegradedArray) generates an Email.
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- Assume "DEVICE partitions" if no DEVICE line is given.
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- Support new 'offset' layout for raid10.
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- When creating a bitmap file, choose a chunksize to limit number
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of bitmap chunks to 2 million. More than this can cause kmalloc
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failure.
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- New 'CREATE' line in mdadm.conf for defaults such as owner, group,
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mode and auto-flag
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- --detail checks if array has been started or not and includes that
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in report.
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- When using --update=uuid on an array with a bitmap, update the
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bitmap's uuid too.
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- Add a copy of /proc/mdstat to the mail message sent by mdadm
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--monitor.
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- New flag --no-degraded to avoid starting arrays if there are
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fewer devices available than last time the array was started.
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This is only needed with --scan, as with --scan, that behaviour
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is the default.
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- Support for 'homehost' concept. This is a fairly major update.
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It includes a configfile option and a command line option for
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specifying a homehost, records that host in the superblock,
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and reports the homehost where possible.
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- Support for Auto Assembly. "mdadm -As" will, if provided with
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the name of a homehost, try to assemble all arrays it can find
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that were created for that homehost. See man pages for more details.
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Development of mdadm is sponsored by
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SUSE Labs, Novell Inc.
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NeilBrown 26th May 2006
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